Woman of Tokyo

“Woman of Tokyo was the moment when [Yasujiro] Ozu became Ozu; when the egg cracked. Form and content synchronized. Photography was not of but was” (Nathaniel Dorsky). Amazing, or perhaps not, that it should have happened with a “quickie,” short both in length (forty-seven minutes) and in its making (eight days). The story involves a young woman who resorts to prostitution to help put her younger brother through college; when he finds out, tragedy ensues. Reminiscent, in its theme of women’s sacrifice, of the social-realist films that Kenji Mizoguchi began making at this time, still it has at least one diversion from the tragedy (a clip from an Ernst Lubitsch film). J. Hoberman called Woman of Tokyo “a subtle riot of discordant formal devices. . . . The crucial scene is dominated by a giant close-up of a teapot, and the ending is a breathtaking wrench of perspective from individual tragedy to matter-of-fact social breakdown. Ozu never made another film like this one, and neither has anyone else.”