What Did the Lady Forget?
                           
Director:  Yasujirô Ozu
Year: 1937
Rating: 7.0
This was Yasujirô Ozu's second film with sound; the first being The Only Son in 1936. His studio Sochiku asked for a comedy and that is what Ozu delivers with this sly subtle comedic portrayal of a middle-class family. In a poll from one of those prestigious institutions this was ranked to be the 59th best film in Japanese history. I don't think I would go that far - I think just being directed by Ozu gives it a special status among film critics. But it certainly is an enjoyably likable peek at marriage and traditional vs modern. A theme that Ozu would hit upon often. This is pre-war so the modernity/Western aspect is interesting - as is a magazine that one is reading featuring Marlene Dietrich on the cover. At the same time of course the roots of WW2 were being well-planted and Japan was making incursions into China. None of that leaks into this family though. They have other worries.



Komiya (Ozu regular Tatsuo Saitô) is a kindly professor at a university and there he is treated with respect and reverence by his students and his handsome assistant Okada (Shûji Sano). At home it is a different story. His wife Tokiko (Sumiko Kurishima - considered to be Japan's first female movie star) rules the household with an iron hand and that includes Komiya. They have no children though and she bosses him around as a substitute. It is a well-run home though with everything ready for the husband when he comes home. Komiya takes it all with the patience of job. Then a niece of about seventeen comes to visit and her presence throws the regular routine out of whack.



Setsuko (the radiant Michiko Kuwano) is from Osaka and is the image of the modern Japan with her fashions, tilted hat, smoking and drinking. She and Tokiko are immediately at odds but Setsuko is able to play Komiya like a fiddle. For him she is a breath of fresh air in a very stuffy home. Nothing sexual here mind you. She sees what the power dynamic in the home is and keeps urging Komiya to fight back. In a sense asking him, are you a man or a mouse. On weekends he is expected to go away to play golf. He doesn't really want to and so instead drops his clubs off with Okada and goes drinking at a local bar. Setsuko tracks him down and begins to drink with him and talks him into going to a Geisha House. Where she gets very drunk and he has to call Okada to take her home. His pretense all falls apart of course and the wife is on him like a fierce animal - where were you. what were you doing. He loses it and slaps her. A shocking moment in an Ozu film. But that changes the entire dynamic within the home. When Setsuko goes back to Osaka, they wistfully say how much they miss her. The ending is a bit enigmatic, but my guess is that the husband and wife are going to do what they can to have a child. Fill the house with sound and laughter.



There are a few off to the side scenes that are quite comical. Okada has been tasked to tutor the young son of a friend of Tokiko in math. The boy gives him the first question and Okada has no idea how to solve it and then a friend of the boy comes in and shows him how. This boy is played by Tomio Aoki, a familiar face in the early Ozu films. In other instances, Tokiko gets together to socialize with her two friends where they rag on their husbands - one who dominates her husband as well. The husband is also an Ozu regular - Takeshi Sakamoto who played Kihachi in a series of four films. When Tokiko tells the two others that her husband slapped her, they ask - hard? - no and she smiles as if it was a badge of honor. As if he is no longer a mouse.