What Did the Lady Forget? (1937)
Directed by Yasujirô Ozu

Film Review

Yasujirô Ozu had originally intended to follow The Only Son (1936), his first sound feature, with an equally grim slice of life involving an old office employee who loses his mind.  His bosses at Shôchiku decided otherwise and Ozu, ever obedient to the needs of his masters, turned out what was to be one of his lightest and funniest films, and also one of his best social satires.  What Did the Lady Forget? may contain most of Ozu's stylistic touches - his low camera positioning, use of static shots of inanimate objects to punctuate the narrative, contemplative pauses, etc. - but it is very western in its choice of subject matter, and a pretty flagrant homage to one of his great cinematic idols, the director Ernst Lubitsch.

As anyone familiar with Ozu's later work will know, the director's sympathies are invariably with Japan's lower middle classes, the class to which he himself belonged.  The upper middle classes (or bourgeoisie) were a different kettle of sushi, the one stratum of Japanese society that Ozu had absolutely no qualms about pillorying, usually to great comic effect.  What Did the Lady Forget? shows Ozu at his most mischievous, mercilessly lampooning the habits of a class that, to him, seemed to personify many of the defects of present-day Japan, including a self-absorbed narcissism and over-willingness to sacrifice tradition for modernity.  To a western observer, the characters that appear in What Did the Lady Forget? seem to be more American in their behaviour and appearance than Japanese, so it seems appropriate that Ozu should plant them in what is, to all intents a purposes, a classic Lubitsch comedy.

The scenario is one that seems to have come straight out of a Hollywood crowd-pleaser - the controlling battleaxe of a wife who governs her home with an iron hand and a lethal tongue; the henpecked husband who wants to rebel but hasn't the nerve to; and the precocious teenager who is used to getting her own way and ends up provoking marital discord between husband and wife.  In the tradition of classic comedy, one small misunderstanding leads to another, bigger, misunderstanding, and before you know it we are slaloming downhill towards the mother of all comedy punch-lines (and punch-ups).  Ozu concludes by proffering his own recipe for the perfect marriage: each partner should never let the other doubt that he/she is master in his own home.  Uncannily smart advice from a man who never married.

The three main characters in What Did the Lady Forget? may initially strike us as familiar movie archetypes but each is rendered with astonishing realism, and surprising affection (Ozu may have laughed at the bourgeoisie but he never seemed to bear them any real malice).  The husband, Komiya (played by Tatsuo Saitô, the director's actor of choice in this early stage of his career), first appears to be a weak and indecisive man.  His idea of a rebellion is not to play golf one weekend when his wife tells him to (whilst letting her think that he is).  Not only is he putty in his wife's hands, he is just as easily controlled by his niece, an even deadlier proposition.  Komiya may have as much backbone as a filleted jellyfish but he is the character we most feel for: the two women in the story soon convince us that they hardened sadists who delight in making life hell for the male sex.

The female protagonists make an interesting contrast.  Setsuko, the troublesome niece, is every inch the Modern Miss, the exact opposite of her terrifyingly prim Aunt Tokiko.  The latter represents slavish adherence to tradition, the former, mindless pursuit of all that is modern.  The intergenerational conflict becomes a metaphor for Japan's crisis of identity in the 1930s, which was driven by a national desire to modernise and follow the West to improve living standards and life chances.  No wonder Tokiko and Setsuko come to blows - they represent diametrically opposed ideals, or so we think.  When the husband, Komiya, is provoked into taking his stand, we see a different side to Tokiko, and we realise that her resistance to change is perhaps just a front.  Once marital harmony has been restored, she is no longer the fire breathing dragon but the good little wife, sending out signals that intimate (in no uncertain terms) she is ready to surrender herself to her master...

Film Synopsis

Komiya is a respected professor of medicine at Tokyo University.  His wife, Tokiko, rules the roost in his house.  Sparks begins to fly when the couple's teenage niece from Osaka, Setsuko, pays a visit.  With her modern ways - smoking, drinking and generally doing just as she pleases - Setsuko soon gets on the wrong side of her aunt.  At his wife's insistence, Komiya departs for his usual weekend golfing holiday, although he has no enthusiasm for the excursion.  Instead, he stays with a student of his, Okada, and visits a Ginza bar, where he meets up with his niece.   Setsuko persuades her uncle to accompany her to a Geisha house.  Hopelessly drunk, she returns to her uncle's house to face the wrath of her disapproving aunt.  When she discovers that her husband has deceived her about how he spent his weekend, Tokiko is furious and launches into a vitriolic attack.  Goaded by his niece, Komiya responds to his wife's latest outburst by slapping her face.  Far from destroying his marriage, Komiya soon discovers that he has gone up in his wife's estimation...