La femme de Tokyo

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.

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".

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.

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.