Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu was ‘discovered’ by post-WWII Western audiences via TOKYO STORY/’53, a quietly powerful family drama of grace notes, interpersonal subtleties and a diminuendo ending. And while the film is representative of his style, and one of his greatest (make that one of film’s greatest), it also limited perception of Ozu’s range, losing sight of broader comic instincts. So this minor effort, a sit-com of domestic strife, may mistakenly come as a surprise from this source. What is surprising is its ‘Spare the rod and spoil the Wife’ moral. Easy to forget how recently Hollywood dropped that sexist trope: the Happy Ending after Wife (or intended) got a good spanking and came to her senses, secretly pleased her man still cared enough to beat her; friends jealous since their husbands would never step up to bat. Yikes! Still easy to find in the 1960s. And of course going back to The Taming of the Shrew and beyond.* But who’d expect to find it in 1937 Ozu? Here, it presents as a ‘much-deserved’ slap in the face from a weak-willed science professor, tired of being bossed around by the wife. (Note: The couple childless, but the film’s last mini-arc pushes them, quite explicitly, toward the marital tatami. The entire situation only coming to a head when his modern niece visits, rudely ticks off her nag of an Aunt, and tells Uncle to take charge of things. NIECE: Lying for him when he’s caught spending the night at his assistant’s apartment when he was supposedly at a golfing weekend. UNCLE: Egging on his handsome assistant to court this upstart niece. Alas, the film, perfectly judged, acted and constructed, right down to some proto-‘pillow’ shots between scenes, is pretty weak tea.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *Every modern production of TotS thinks they’re the first to have noticed (and fixed) Kate’s complete capitulation to Master Petruchio. Making it unobjectionable by ironic playing or as comic over-reaction. But has anyone ever seen a production that doesn’t undermine the groveling? A tradition that likely started on the second night of the original 1594 production.
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