Woman Of Tokyo

I find it fascinating to go back and see early Yasujiro Ozu films, because I first started watching his late career films-where his style was firmly established. The themes of these films largely dealt with the disintegration of the postwar family, and were very stylistically similar in cinematography and in the narrative technique. In his early films, such as Woman Of Tokyo (1933), a silent film that is very brief-45 minutes in length, that is much more melodramatic than most late Ozu films. It concerns the story of a brother who is a student who is being supported by an older sister who works in an office by day and as a prostitute at a club at night to pay his way through school. His girlfriend's father uncovers his sister's ruse and informs him of the situation and he is distraught and runs from their shared home. This story line feels as though it should have been undertaken by Kenji Mizoguchi, a contemporary of Ozu's who had many similar story lines. Visually, the film is dynamic in away that Ozu would embrace in his later years, however, there are still life cutaways that would define his later period-but the variety of mise en scene seen in this film are on also on full display. Ozu's fascination with foreign cinema is displayed in a scene where the brother takes his girlfriend to a Lubitsch film-a short film entitled "The Clerk" taken from "If I Had a Million", which is shown in the film as well. This film is so different form the Ozu I know best from the 50s and 60s.