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A few verses in the night ("Even the moon is swallowed by shadows once in a while / Let alone small human beings...") mark Yasujiro Ozu's first views of Japan after the war, just a thespian (Reikichi Kawamura) practicing in Tokyo's low-income district. His pal (Chishu Ryu) is an itinerant fortune-teller who brings home a stray (Hohi Aoki), "what a thing to pick up on the street!" Adults draw straws to see who takes care of the child, a rigged game, the widowed matron (Choko Iida) is stuck with him. "Don't you need a boy?" "Not me, I need a rubber hose." She shoos him away in vain at the beach, her scowling can't stop the bonding. (She protests the nickname of "Grandma," they settle on "Auntie.") Precise geometry for grudging poignancy, curlicues of human interaction versus the wasteland outside, a sad song given an upbeat rhythm with chopsticks on saucers. The tyke is a taciturn little bed-wetter, as punishment he has to fan-dry the pee-stained blanket that looks suspiciously like the Stars and Stripes on a clothesline. A canine metaphor for the unlikely friendship, emotional tails made to wag: "The boy's tail is thin and short. Yours is thick and long, like that of a Tosa dog. Though you're a bit of a bulldog, too." Ray's windblown rubbish (The Lusty Men) and Antonioni's lamp post (L'Eclisse), Iida's Aline MacMahon resemblance. A most evocative gag, posed figures upside-down in the camera's eye followed by voices in the dark and the photographer's empty studio. Happy tears for the younger generation huddled around Saigo's statue, two lads share a smoke. "I guess you lost a treasure." The deadpan-poetic heir to this is Kitano in Kikujiro. With Mitsuko Yoshikawa, Takeshi Sakamoto, Hideko Mimura, Eitaro Ozawa, Eiko Takamatsu, Seiji Nishimura, and Taiji Tonoyama. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |