Film Review
For anyone whose familiarity with Yasujiro Ozu is confined to his
post-WWII films, his early films can only come as something of a
revelation, exhibiting a surprising mix of styles that appears totally
at odds with Ozu's very distinctive, tightly constrained
aesthetic.
Walk Cheerfully,
the first of Ozu's gangster films, shows this in spades, a pacey
collision of crime drama and romantic melodrama that feels more
American than Japanese in both its story and composition.
An obsessive devotee of western culture, Ozu had a particular
fascination with American gangster films, including many of Josef von
Sternberg's early films, such as
Underworld (1927) and The Dragnet
(1928) - and Japanese cinema audiences at this time shared this
obsession. It is no accident that many of Ozu's films of the
early 1930s have a distinctly American feel to them. Like many of
his compatriots, for him America represented modernity, an escape from
the feudalistic shackles of the past. American culture was a kind
of drug to which the young Yasujiro Ozu was hopelessly addicted.
Walk Cheerfully is probably
the most westernised of all Ozu's films. The plot (inherited from
a friend and fellow director at Kamata studio, Shimizu Hiroshi) is a
sorry accumulation of American-style clichés - a rogue turns
away from a life of crime so that he can win the heart of a virtuous
woman. There is no opportunity for deep character analysis, no
opportunity to link the story to issues affecting contemporary Japanese
society. It is a straightfoward redemption melodrama and Ozu
treats it as such, although he perhaps invests his characters with more
humanity and dignity than many of his American
counterparts. The film may have been shot in Japan but it
appears to be set on the other side of the Pacific, a sprawling urban
metropolis with a busy dockyard attached, where all signs are in
English and most of the characters wear western-style outfits and adopt
western mannerisms. (It is tempting to think that,
had this not been a silent film, the dialogue would have been entirely
in American English.)
There are a few fleeting concessions to
Japanese culture, but these are a mere exotic embellishment in what is
unmistakably an affectionate Hollywood pastiche.
Walk Cheerfully begins with an
exterior tracking shot which sets the pace and tone of the film.
Right from the start, we know that this is going to be a fast-moving
entertainment, and once the film is underway the pace hardly lets up
for a moment. For a director who is renowned for his static
camera set-ups, the camera is remarkably agile in this film. In
addition to the abundant tracking shots and zooms, there is a rare use
(for Ozu) of cross-cutting as the film slips momentarily into
Perils of Pauline mode, with the
hero rushing to save the heroine from a fate worst than death.
The interior lighting is also atypical for Ozu, more expressionistic
than naturalistic, again mimicking the style of contemporary American
crime films.
Ozu was just 26 when he made
Walk
Cheerfully, his fourteenth film, so it is hardly surprising that
it bares scant resemblance to the formalised masterpieces he regularly
turned out in his mature phase and for which he is best known. It
is a young man's film, showing a young filmmaker's flair for wild
experimentation, and possibly an overly optimistic view of human
nature. Although it is classed as a gangster film, it can equally
be enjoyed as a melodrama, morality play, even a comedy. It is,
above all, Ozu's most ebullient tribute to American cinema, leaving us
in no doubt that he was a westerner at heart. How strange then
that, by the time the west had come to know about him in the 1960s, he
would be regarded as one of the most quintessential of all Japanese
filmmakers...
© James Travers 2013
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Next Yasujirô Ozu film:
The Lady and the Beard (1931)
Film Synopsis
Koyama Kenji, nicknamed Kenji the Knife, is a small-time crook who
makes a dishonest living with his friends Senko, Gunpei and
Chieko. One day, he notices an attractive young woman, Yasue, leaving a
jewellers' shop with an expensive ring, which she has bought for her
employer. Kenji later runs into Yasue when she is taking a picnic
with her younger sister. He offers her a lift in his car and soon
realises that he is in love with her. Kenji is not the only man
who has designs on Yasue. Her boss intends starting an illicit
relationship with her and, with Chieko's connivance, he manages to lure
her to a hotel room. Kenji comes to Yasue's rescue but, knowing
about his criminal background, the young woman refuses to have anything
to do with him until he has changed his ways. So great is Kenji's
love for Yasue that he gives up his life of crime and starts looking
for honest work. Just when Kenji has made it up with Yasue his
criminal past suddenly catches up with him...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.