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Cinema Ozu (8): That Night's Wife

16: That Night's Wife / Sono yo no tsuma (1930)
Status: survives, but not on home video
Script: full script preserved
Prints: original negative and multiple prints survive

That Night's Wife is based on a short story called From Nine to Nine. It's a crime thriller, with guns pointed and hair-trigger decisions. It's also a domestic melodrama with hand wringing and overwrought crying. Like his run of silent comedies, he turns the cliche into the unique by giving it weight and a serious approach. Ozu compounds moral crises here for the first time, with multiple people pulled in opposite directions by their respective consciences. It's also very much adorned with Americanism, with the only property evidence of the movie's "Japaneseness" being the female lead wearing a kimono.

A father commits a robbery to get enough money to pay for medical treatment of his very ill daughter, Michiko. His wife doesn't approve, but cares bout the health of her child above all else. The cop who eventually tracks down the father has a choice to make: should take the guy in and risk the stress killing the kid? The father is likewise faced with the choice of flight from justice or doing his time.

Tatsuo Saito appears in yet another brief supporting role as the family doctor. The kid playing Michiko really sells the agony of a terrible illness. The Detective (Togo Yamamoto) steals the movie out from under everyone else. He only appears in one more Ozu film, a lost one at that (Ojosan). Chishu Ryu makes an appearance as another policeman.

Hope for a Region 1 DVD: I managed to once again track down an Italian TV bootleg of this one, as I did Walk Cheerfully. It's surely not the ideal way to see it, but that's what exists at present. Like I said yesterday, I'd put this one forward as a candidate for a themed Ozu's Criminals triple-pack with Walk Cheerfully and Dragnet Girl.

Tomorrow, I'm following up today's brief tease "7a" on I Flunked, But... with a "7b". We'll see if and when a "7c" happens (hope against hope). On top of "7b", I'm tackling The 3 Lost Films of 1930: The Vengeful Spirit of Eros, Lost Luck, and Young Miss.

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 even 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.