It's one of Ozu's gangster movies form the early 1930s... only it's really about a father whose daughter is so sick he commits a robbery to pay the bills, then gets easily tracked down at the child's bedside.
A brief survey of online discussion refers to this as one of Ozu's "early, non-typical silents." It's the same attitude I complained about in my review of DRAGNEt GIRL as if John Ford got off the train from Maine in 1915 and announced "I'm ready to direct How Green Was My Valley. What do you mean this is Azusa?"
It's slow and contemplative and allows the audience to get inside the characters' heads and is a fine little movie. What it doesn't do is use the same, low perspective and simple shots that Ozu would cultivate after the Second World War.... almost certainly because it would not occur to him for fifteen or twenty years that they would work. It's too bad he didn't talk about it with the geniuses on the Internet. They know everything.
A brief survey of online discussion refers to this as one of Ozu's "early, non-typical silents." It's the same attitude I complained about in my review of DRAGNEt GIRL as if John Ford got off the train from Maine in 1915 and announced "I'm ready to direct How Green Was My Valley. What do you mean this is Azusa?"
It's slow and contemplative and allows the audience to get inside the characters' heads and is a fine little movie. What it doesn't do is use the same, low perspective and simple shots that Ozu would cultivate after the Second World War.... almost certainly because it would not occur to him for fifteen or twenty years that they would work. It's too bad he didn't talk about it with the geniuses on the Internet. They know everything.