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Cinema Ozu (5e): Missing An Introduction to Marriage

13: An Introduction to Marriage / Kekkon-gaku nyumon (1930)
Status: completely lost

A dentist and his wife are stuck in a stale marriage, and decide to hit the spa to liven things up. The spa idea fails. On the train ride home, the dentist flirts with a young woman who rebuffs him and leaves, forgetting her gloves on the table. The dentist pockets them.

The young woman returns to her own home, where her professor husband (Tatsuo Saito) barely acknowledges her. She makes mention of her tooth hurting. Uh-oh, we see where this is going already, don't we?

So, the professor's wife ends up going to the dentist who came onto her. He returns one glove to her, but as he's going to give the second one, the dentist's wife shows up and interrupts. The dentist hits a pub that night and strikes up conversation with the professor, of all people, and they become fast friends. The professor invites the dentist over to his place to hang out, which they do. The dentist freaks out when he recognizes the young woman he's been hitting on as his new pal's wife. The dentist gets the hell out of there.

The next day, the professor's wife goes to see the dentist to ask what is going on, but the dentist's wife sees them talking. The dentist's wife rings up the professor and reports the incident of the glove loss/attempted exchange. The prof gets suspicious and goes through his wife's things, only to find a single glove. He gets good and furious and asks his wife what she's been up to. She tells him that she wants to leave him. Little does he understand that it's due to him being a lousy husband and not due to another man getting her between the sheets.

The professor goes by the dentist's house to verify his suspicions with the dentist's wife. She surprises him by assuring the professor that his wife hasn't strayed. She explains the mix-up and provides him with the missing glove. He rushes to catch the same train his wife has boarded on the way to visit her father. They meet in the dining car, the wife feels the glove in her husband's pocket, and they reconcile, laughing the whole time. Cue the happily ever after for them, while apparently forgetting about the unhappy dentist's wife and her moron husband.

Ozu's Lubitschian symmetry is seen once again here. I didn't mention it above, but the initial flirtation occurred in a dining car (just as the happy ending does). The most important landmark in Introduction to Marriage is that it's Ozu's first film that dwells entirely in the world of the upper-middle class, a place where he gets good and comfortable for a while. He would revisit little touches seen here later on in What Did the Lady Forget? and The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice.

This was supposed to go up a week ago, but familial obligations derailed my carefully-planned posting schedule. Tomorrow, we resume as originally planned with only the second fully-surviving Ozu feature, Walk Cheerfully. It's about a "good bad man" who changes the direction of his life for a woman. See you tomorrow.

Cinema Ozu is a limited-run series of articles about the career and impact of Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. My primary intent is to chronicle my own journey through his films, a fair number of which I have seen, but many more of which I have not. The most essential research tools I have used are David Bordwell's book Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema and definitive Ozu fansite "Ozu-san".

The series is also timed to celebrate the July 2010 U.S. release of The Only Son and There Was a Father as a DVD double-set by The Criterion Collection. You can find all entries in Cinema Ozu here. New to the series? It's best to start from the beginning.