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Cinema Ozu (27): Moving Up to the Moneyed with Lady

Setsuko (l.) and Uncle Kimoya (r.)

Feature #35:
What Did the Lady Forget? / Shujuko wa nani o wasureta ka
(1937)
Status: fully preserved and readily available on DVD in Asia
Script: fully preserved
Prints: original negative and multiple prints survive
Region1 DVD: none as of this writing

A decided departure from the dire, hopeless (but still wonderful) The Only Son, Ozu's final pre-war film would plant the seeds from whence the social comedy in his later films would sprout. David Bordwell notes that What Did the Lady Forget? is often completely overlooked and ignored by Western critics. I have a feeling that it's mostly due to the rarity of screenings and lack of a British or U.S. DVD, something being rectified in the UK on this very day with new BFI Ozu Blu-ray/DVD combo releases. What Did... is a very enjoyable 71-minute comedy of manners and tradition, and it's a shame that it's import-only for U.S. Ozuphiles.

Choko Iida: as funny in comedy as she is touching in drama

The movie opens with Chiyoko (Only Son star Choko Iida) being dropped off at a friend's house by her husband Sugiyama (Ozu's Kihachi, Takeshi Sakamoto). She snaps at him to do this and that and sends him on his way. I'm rather certain that Ozu wanted to give Iida an opportunity to stretch a little after doing something so heavy. Neither she nor he is a main character in the movie. Ozu is once again quoting the style of one of his idols (Lubitsch) by intentionally starting us a bit off-guard.

(l. to r.) Mitsuko, Tokiko, and Chiyoko.

Tatsuo Saito plays Professor (also medical doctor) Komiya, whose wife Tokiko (Sumiko Kurishima) keeps him on the shortest of leashes. Their Osakan niece Setsuko (Kayoko Kuwano, also credited as Michiko Kuwano) comes in to town for a visit. Setsuko is a young woman who acts like a spoiled rotten child, whining for cigarettes and booze at every opportunity. She struck me as a trashy, bratty girl (like the ones on Jersey Shore...no offense, Jersey) coming to visit her relatives upstate.

Dr. Kimoya is on the phone and says to a patient, "Yes, I'm looking at it right now. Yup, looks like you'll never have children. Okay, bye." and then quickly hangs up the phone. I'm not kidding. It spoils nothing to know that, because it hits you abruptly in mere seconds. It's hilarious.

Tokiko forces her husband to take a few days to go golfing, but he skips out on it and hides out at his student Okada's apartment. Setsuko finds out and shows up at a bar, demanding Professor Kimoya take her to a geisha house. He takes her out against his better judgment, she gets skunked, and he has Okada drive her home (since he's supposed to be "golfing"). When she arrives sloshed, Tokiko goes through the roof at this drunk, disrespectful girl waltzing in at all hours of the night.

Both times we visit Cervantes Bar, we pan across a quotation. It is written in English and attributed to Don Quixote, to wit: "I drink upon occasion, sometimes upon no occasion."

The plot progresses with the "new" (Setsuko) battling the "old" (Tokiko), with Kimoya caught in the middle. The title refers to both Tokiko and Setsuko each forgetting something about the way that men and women are wired, as if divorced from the real world around them. Setsuko wants modern men to be Meiji era brutes, and Tokiko wants them to be obedient pets.

Spoilers are ahead, so skip the next two paragraphs if that bothers you.

There's an unseen-but-heard Kabuki sequence that is less irreverent than past instances of "Old Japan".

There is a Geisha house performance that you do see, however.

Kimoya tries to make up a cover story, but it backfires. Setsuko earlier encourages him to smack his wife real good in the mouth (that'll show her!), and he eventually does. He feels terrible, Setsuko is shocked by it and feels like she was at fault, and both apologize to Tokiko.

Then, Tokiko brags about getting smacked good and hard to her bored housewife friends Chiyoko (Iida) and Mitsuko (Mitsuko Yoshikawa). This moment is where the brilliance of Kurishima's stuck up ball-and-chain performance is revealed. A great kicker comes once Tokiko has returned home, and not-so-subtly tells her husband, "You'll sleep well tonight." She dismisses the housekeeper, starts turning out the lights in the house, and brings her husband a smorgasbord of food as we fade out.

Setsuko reading a magazine with a photo of Marlene Dietrich in it, which makes the now-regular Hollywood reference by Ozu.

The movie is a lighthearted take on the general emasculation of the Japanese male that had been happening for years by this point. It's a pivotal moment in Ozu's filmography, because the playful, almost goofy tone is something we don't really see to this extent from here on. Ozu's final pre-WWII film finds him jumping to the bored bourgeois classes. We get a peek at the post-WWII Ozu who is less bluntly dismissive of traditionalism.

Sumiko Kurishima, who plays the outlandishly oppressive Tokiko to perfection, would only act in a couple more films after this point, one pre-WWII and one in the late 1950's. She had previously worked with Ozu on the now-lost Young Miss and Marriage for Beginners. She was much more active in the early silent era, and is considered Japan's first movie star.

We bid farewell to "Tokkan Kozo" (l.), though he goes on to a long, long career.

Takeshi Sakamoto!

Shuki Sano as Okada (which I think was named after Tokihiko Okada

This marks Tomio "Tokkan Kozo" Aoki's last film with Ozu, and he has a very brief role as the young friend of another boy. We'll look at some of the rest of his career shortly in an "Appendix" piece. Other Ozu collaborators are beginning their final run with the director, like both Tatsuo Saito and Takeshi Sakamoto. Ozu newcomer Shuji Sano, who plays Okada, will next play Chishu Ryu's adult son in There Was a Father. He'll pop up in some more Ozu films through 1951's Early Summer.

Uncle and Niece escaping the harpy Tokiko

Michiko Kuwano (credited here as "Kayoko" Kuwano), who plays Setsuko here, would not make any other films with Ozu. She would continue to be active until 1946, when she died suddenly at the too-young age of 31 due to complications with a pregnancy. There is, however, a poetic reincarnation story along the lines of what happened with Tokihiko Okada.

Kuwano's daughter Miyuki, who was born in 1942, would work with Ozu very late in his career. She first worked with him on Equinox Flower, and then played a character named Michiko in Late Autumn, his second to last film. She also played a small part in Radishes and Carrots, a 1964 film directed by Minoru Shibuya from a script written by Ozu and Kogo Noda. The production was to have been Ozu's next film after An Autumn Afternoon until he fell ill and died.

There's no way to know if shots like this could be credited to Mohara or Atsuta (or both).

This marks a passing of the torch from Hideo Mohara (sometimes Hideo "Shigehara") to Mohara's assistant Yuharu Atsuta as Ozu's sole cinematographer (with a single exception). There are some sudden, stunning compositions (like the fast sequence of shots late in the film seen below).

Try as I might, I have yet to find the exact reason why Mohara would never work on another film (for Ozu or otherwise), but I take it that he died shortly after completing his work here. Mohara's wife (widow?) Choko Iida, the star of Only Son and delightful comic relief here, would go on to act for three decades longer.

Hope for a Region1 DVD: Considering its low level of critical esteem, I would expect this one to fit most naturally in an Eclipse set with other early Ozu sound films like Kagamijishi and Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family. The British Film Institute is packing a DVD of this movie in as a "bonus" with the Early Summer Blu-ray released today.

This is Ozu's last one before the start the Second World War, so next we'll take a look at what he did (and tried to do) during the war. I've got some backlogged Appendix pieces and other things that'll be peppered in there.

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.