Una donna di Tokyo

When I watched "Woman of Tokyo", I was struck by the theme which reminded me of Mizoguchi's works which were often on prostitution and its effects. With this film, Ozu also shares Mizoguchi's compassion for self-sacrificing women. See for yourself : in a poor working-class district of Tokyo, a woman named Chikako (Yoshiko Okada) shares a modest apartment with her brother Ryoichi (Ureo Egawa). Chikako works every day as an office typist and every evening on commissioned translations for a university professor, so Ryoichi can devote himself completely to his studies. However, Chikako comes under scrutiny when a police inspector pays an unexpected visit to her office one day. The nebulous and undisclosed nature of the investigation leads to speculation, and rumors begin to surface about Chikako's disreputable conduct by working as a cabaret hostess. In an attempt to mitigate the embarrassment of the brewing scandal, the well-intentioned Harue (Kinuyo Tanaka), Ryoichi's girlfriend, decides to alert Chikako of the gossip, but instead, reveals the information to Ryoichi. Outraged and ashamed by his sister's behavior, Ryoichi rejects Chikako and leaves home...

There are many things to enjoy in "Woman of Tokyo" (the plot and the acting, to start with), but first of all it is an interesting film for all those who would like to see en early elaboration of Ozu's style, especially in his use of domestic setting and confined, interior shots. There is also an overt tribute to Ernst Lubitsch (much admired by Ozu) with a full-frame excerpt from Lubitsch's short film entitled "The Clerk" taken from "If I Had a Million". Ozu will get only better and better after this "Woman of Tokyo".

Ozu's "Tokyo no Onna" (Women of Tokyo) is a short film that delivers alot of tragic import for its length, timing and execution. It is a simple tale, concerning the lives of a Japanese college student and his sister. Things go awry when he finds out that his sister is actually a "hostess"/prostitute at a local bar, and that she is actually financing his college education by means of that career. There are a series of fine indoor shots, perfectly lighted and composed in a dark, (pre-film noir) mood. There is one great outdoor shot I remember, and that is when the sister looks outside, seeing the steam coming from a nearby chimney, and hanging clothes/socks out to dry. The scene where the student/main character walks in the dismal street is also nicely done. Overall, the film is a great example of a strong short film narrative, and has a slightly (unexpected) tragic twist at the end.

Ozu's shortest feature at only 46-minutes, Woman of Tokyo is the first Ozu film that feels more like an attempt to replicate Ozu rather than a film he made himself. The pieces are there, but the tone is wrong. Reportedly made in no more than 9 days while he was waiting for the production of Dragnet Girl to get ready, the film just simply goes too far into melodrama in its final moments to feel like genuine Ozu. And, to make matters even worse, I just don't think it works. It's too much over too little.

Ryoichi (Ureo Egawa) is a university student whose sister, Chikako (Yoshiko Okada), supports him by working at an office and helping a professor with his work in the evening. Ryoichi has a girlfriend, Harue (Kinuyo Tanaka), who lives with her brother, Kinoshita (Shinyo Nara). Everything is right in the world until a policeman shows up at Chikako's work without explanation, asking to look at her employment records, and rumors start swirling.

Now, Ozu's obviously been dealing in social commentary for a few years, but this is something that borders on odd to me: gossip. It's probably a cultural thing. Japan is much more of a shame culture, so gossip can probably more easily destroy people's lives than I imagine. Still, it's a film about rumors completely upending someone's life. And I do mean completely.

The rumor is that Chikako isn't helping a nice old professor with his research. She's working at an illicit club that sells alcohol. It's not the kind of work for a good, young woman.

The drama is around the rumors going from Kinoshita to Harue to Ryoichi, and Ryoichi taking it very, very badly. It gets worse when he finds out that the rumors are true.

So, the movie shifts from gossiping to shaming nature of Japan dealing with women who don't act right. That's interesting, but it's a shift that I don't think quite works. The film is a drama from beginning to end, so we don't have light comedy to buoy us through the first motions of thin plot. It's also really short, so the view of life before the changes are a bit thinner than they probably need to be.

And that shortness combines poorly with the film's moves in its final act. Ryoichi gets really mad at Harue for besmirching his sister, and then he gets completely destroyed when he finds out it's true. And he makes a choice that no one in an Ozu film would ever make, sending the film deep into melodrama territory.

The film still looks like an Ozu film with people quietly examining the changing nature of things, but the emotions are so out in the open and even, I struggle to say it this way since the actual dramatic point is actually quite large, overdone that it just ends up playing out like thin melodrama. Which is really weird to say in an Ozu film where third acts are where the films go to quiet down and become introspective. It's a weird mix that doesn't mesh well, and it does indicate a quick turnaround on the film. More time, and Ozu probably would have changed things to more closely align with his storytelling ethos.

So, I am less than enthused with this film not because it doesn't align with Ozu's narrative conventions, but because the direction he takes the film just doesn't work. It's overwrought instead of affecting. I don't have a natural aversion to melodrama. Filmmakers can do it quite well (Masaki Kobayashi had a few very good examples in his filmography), but this is one where I just ended up disconnecting in the end.

Seeing this a second time in a healthy restored print, I still can't say I'm entirely won over by this early melodrama involving a woman who is scandalized when her brother's girlfriend learns of her prostitution to help cover his student expenses. The chief interest of this film lies in its unusual structure: as J. Hoberman notes, the film is "a subtle riot of discordant formal devices -- two- character crosscutting is complicated by weird eye-line matches and bizarre special jumps, inexplicable interpolations, and exreme close-ups." (There's also some interesting non-matching of dialogue intertitles with the characters speaking them, which David Bordwell discusses in his study on Ozu.) Hoberman concludes that "inadvertant or not, it's a masterpiece," though I think one would have to appraise the film on strictly formalist experimental grounds to come to that evaluation (Hoberman was probably thinking of his favorite cut- and-paste classic ROSE HOBART as he wrote this). There certainly is plenty to baffle over, such as the sudden wild digression to two journalists bantering happily at the end of the film, which seems to suggest Ozu's contempt at public indifference to a private tragedy, a theme that gets a real workout in the much later masterpiece TOKYO TWILIGHT.

This short Ozu silent has the simplest of stories, and it's rather somber. It takes about half of the runtime to reveal the rumor about a man's sister, that she's been moonlighting as a prostitute, as pace was an issue despite the film's length. She's doing it to help him through school, but he beats her, and then out of shame, harms himself. Because the story was so skeletal and none of the characters were fleshed out, I can't say I was bowled over, but the range Yoshiko Okada showed in her performance made it worth seeing. Ozu gives us little visual touches as well, like the steaming teapot juxtaposed with the billowing smokestack, and his impeccable shot compositions.

More importantly, in the line where the title character calls her brother a coward, we get what seems to be a criticism of traditional honor and the role of shame in Japan. This woman is such a loving sister in the opening scene, works hard in the office, and sacrifices herself at night to provide money for her brother so that they can have a better life, in a pragmatic and poignant way - something I wish Ozu had explored - and then he can't handle just knowing about it, because of what it might do to the family's reputation.

The fact that we get a scene of the American film If I Had a Million (1932) is certainly meaningful - if this poor woman had a million dollars, she wouldn't be selling herself, and none of this would have happened. Together with the three reporters snooping around like happy jackals afterwards, not beginning to scratch the surface of the truth while rushing to get their stories off to print, there is some nice commentary about the desperate, sad lives in a city, unknown to others. I just wish the film had a little more depth to it, but it's not a bad way to spend 47 minutes.