A "quota quickie" silent by Ozu, in the European style
25 February 2000
"That Night's Wife" (the English title) is actually a poor translation of the Japanese "Sono yo no tsuma". A better one might be "My Wife on That Night". Briefly, the film revolves around a desperate man who commits a crime in order to support his family, and the moral dilemma the policeman who tracks him down finds himself in. The film abounds with cultural inconsistencies like Japanese wearing their shoes in the house, etc. It seems Ozu was trying to do a Japanese film in the style of the German realist films he must have been seeing at the time. There is very little of what one associates with the later style of Ozu. Still, it is taut and entertaining.
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