conventional objects
by Douglas Messerli
Tadao Ikeda (screenplay, based on a story by Yasujirō
Ozu [James Maki]), Yasujirō Ozu (director) 非常線の女
(Hijōsen no
Onna) (Dragnet Girl) / 1933
Although made in the 1930s Ozu’s Dragnet
Girl was not truly rediscovered until the mid-1970s, long after the great Japanese
director was known for his domestic dramas filmed with what is often described
as a “meditative, nonintrusive approach to storytelling,” wherein the camera,
as Eddie Muller describes it, is held “typically at a level simulating the
eyeline of someone kneeling on a tatami mat.”
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This 1933 gangster film, self-consciously engaging with Hollywood noir and gangster movies, shows Ozu as a very different kind of director, the story
told from the very personal viewpoints of its central figures, the ex-boxer now
gangster Joji (Joji Oka), his gangster moll, Tokiko (Kinuyo Tanaka) who by day
works as a seemingly innocuous typist in a firm where the bosses’ son is
desperately trying to woo her into his bed, and Kazuko (Sumiko Mizukubo), a far
more conventional woman working in a record shop whose brother Hiroshi (Kōji
Mitsui) gets involved not only with boxing but with the gangsters who have come
out of the boxing club, particularly Joji.
Unlike Ozu’s later works, his camera in this film is a curious tool that
takes the viewer everywhere, from standard head-on shots of the characters,
exploring their bodies and faces as well from odd angles, while traveling
endlessly over objects, hanging male hats, punching bags, typewriters in action
and covered, teapots, yo-yos, record players, American Boxing posters, and even
the RCA mutt Nipper. The director’s camera darts in and out of street stroller’s
legs, cuts bodies away from their heads, and, in general, presents the viewer
with an absolutely dizzying sense a reality that at times results in near vertigo,
particularly when late in the film, Tokiko and Joji attempt to escape capture
as they climb out over a roof of their nearby apartment building.
That
busy camera, in fact, often stands in for the real action strangely missing
from this tale. We see Tokiko in her workplace; join Joji on a return to his
old home in the boxing gym where the coach continues to try to lure him back to
the ring; share with the couple, Joji and Tokiko, a night on the town in a
restaurant dancing to jazz and where Joji, in a back room, slugs out one of his
major gangland opponents; and return with the couple to their flophouse of a
flat. Other scenes are played out in the record store where Kazuko works, on
the streets, and in a poolhall. But by and large the plot seems almost
attenuated. Although Joji is described as a gangster we are not completely clued
in to what kind of unlawful activities he is actually involved. And he seems to
derive most of his income from the money Tokiko takes home and perhaps from the
sale of expensive rings and necklaces the bosses’ son keeps awarding her for
her potential sexual services.
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The
heart of this film lies in the actions and personalities of its central
characters rather than in their actions. As Joji, Oka’s handsome profile along with
the sneering allurement of his facial gestures dominate the film. He is clearly
dangerous but simultaneously loveable and even kind to those who are loyal to
him.
Tokiko
is also a kind of double-figure, at the office playing a hard-working, almost
giggly office girl, while after work dressing up in sleek gowns and turning
into a tough dame who knows only too well which women are after her man and
which men might be a threat. She’s a tough-talking woman that gangsters like
Joji and many a Hollywood thug depend on to sometimes pull them away from their
own naiveté.
Joji’s
wonderful assistant Senko announces all arrivals and departures with the kind
of dance that seems like an odd mix of Michael Jackson and the clumsy “postman”
in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s film Teorema as he signifies his role as a
marionette. It is he who introduces the “featherweight” boxer Hiroshi to Joji,
changing the young student’s behavior and altering the lives of all the other
film’s characters.
In
short, each of these characters is highly conflicted in dress, gesture, and
behavior. The young student Hiroshi is perhaps the most complex. Still living
at home with the sister, Kazuko, who has raised him alone, as the film begins the boy
is still mostly good. But it’s clear that he desires to enter either the boxing
world or the gangster society not because of any particular fascination with
illegal activities, but because of the macho figures he associates with those
worlds.
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As Ozu
quickly portrays him, Hiroshi is absolutely in love with all things masculine.
He secrets away in his schoolbook pictures of boxers, particularly the image of
Joji, the way boys of a later generation might collect physique images and
magazines; and he clearly perceives the very touch of another man’s boxing
glove as a kind of love pat. Throughout the film, Hiroshi, his hands in near constant
motion, reaches out for quick touches and embraces the men who surround him. He
clearly almost deifies the male body, and even later in the film, when Joji
slugs him for his thievery, he begs him to slug him again. He is a boy so
desperate for the touch of a man that it has been transformed even into
seemingly sado-masochistic gestures. It doesn’t seem as important to Hiroshi
that he is being punished or even what he is being punished for as it does that
his hero has actually laid hands on his body.
In
his essay for the 2014 San Francisco Film Festival, Muller summarizes the
situation:
“Hanging heavily over this otherwise
lightweight melodrama is the story of Hiroshi…Kazuko’s brother, who longs to be
a boxer and yakuza—because he’s in thrall to the dashing Joji. Ozu comes
daringly close to abandoning his usual obliqueness when depicting Hiroshi’s
ardor for male companionship and camaraderie. It’s clear Kazuko isn’t trying to
save her brother from a criminal life, but from a different ‘deviant’
lifestyle.”
It
is Kazuko’s worry for her brother that finally leads her to contact Joji, begging
him to cease any contact with Hiroshi, and to free the boy of his association
with men of his type. Dressed in traditional kimono and speaking in a gentle,
pleading manner that macho men have always found irresistible in women whom
they recognize they can easily dominate, Joji immediately dismisses the boy
from his services, Hiroshi now being far too intoxicated by the all-male
society in which he has entered to possibly give it up. As he has previously
told Joji, no matter what he does, he will not give up his admiration for him, reacting
to him much as Tokiko later does to Kazuko with words to the effect, “I really
like you,” the affection perhaps being much stronger than the English language
translation hints.
But our attention shifts back to Joji who begins visiting Kazuko’s
record shop and listening to the classical music on a newly purchased phonograph
at home. Recognizing what has happened and determining to keep her man, Tokiko packs
a gun and makes an appointment with Kazuko on the street, not unlike Kazuko’s
previous meeting with Joji.
The meeting does not go as planned, the girl reacting with smiles and
kindness when Tokiko pronounces that she is “Joji’s friend,” clearly, even in
this silent film, delivered in a tone that makes it obvious that he’s her man.
But Kazuko only gushes over his kindness about Hiroshi, no territorial envy on
her mind. Tokiko, unable to believe her naiveté, responds sarcastically, “That
doesn’t mean that I’m your friend. Chances are we’re enemies.” Tokiko crosses
the street, presumably preparing to leave what she would like to imagine as her
victim, but observing only the confusion of the girl, particularly when she
follows her, takes out the gun, challenging her, “Don’t you want to shoot me?”
When Kazuko merely shakes her head “no,” again confused by the question,
Tokiko tries once more to rouse the girl to anger, “Then I’ll shoot you.”
Tokiko looks down, as if fated to accept whatever comes her way. It is only
then that the tough moll realizes how foolish she has been, walking back towards
Kazuko as she announces, “I hate to say this, but I like you.”
She moves close to Kazuko, plants a kiss on her lips, and quickly backs
away. Having angled his camera to the close placement of their legs, we do not
witness the kiss, but as soon as Tokiko backs away, we see Kazuko touching her
face in startlement of the gesture.
“In
subsequent scenes,” Muller observes, Tokiko giddily reveals that she now shares
Joji’s infatuation with Kazuko, and throughout the rest of the film, even when
she and Kazuko meet up again, she has nothing kind words for the woman and
smiles when she sees her.
Behind
this strangely perverse lesbian scene, obviously, is perhaps an equally
perverse love of their own traditional Japanese culture as symbolized by
Kazuko, a pre-World War II clue of a general desire to return to the lost
traditions and values. Certainly it explains Tokiko’s almost immediate attempt
to become the “other,” to replace what Kazuko represents to Joji. Tokiko brings
home food which she probably is unable to cook and insists that she too can be
the good girl, the image of femineity which has so completely and suddenly
altered her man.
Joji is rightfully skeptical, which ends in an argument and her leaving,
Joji tossing after her all of her clothing and the housewife goods she has
purchased, as close as putting a grapefruit into his moll’s face as Japanese
cinema will ever get—my reference of course being the US gangster film, The
Public Enemy (1931).
Suitcase in hand, Tokiko returns to the nightclub which she and Joji
attended most nights, standing with a drink in hand while tears stream down her
face. There she meets up with the business owner’s son, Okazaki (Yasuo Nanjo),
whose pleas that she finally spend the night with him finally reach her—at
least so it appears.
Admitting that she is none of the things which she pretends to be, she
is accepted by Okazaki nonetheless and taken back to his apartment. Tokiko,
however, is still savvy enough to realize that such a relationship will never
survive the bed of a few weeks or nights, and quickly leaves him, returning to
Joji in admission of that she is still a delinquent, a punk like him.
The two almost make-up until Kazuko again shows up to his door,
wondering if he might have seen her missing brother. He rudely sends her off,
explaining to Tokiko that he had to speak to her that way in order to get her
out of his system.
But she has still obviously changed them, as Tokiko attempts to and
finally succeeds to convince Joji to give up his life as a criminal and move
somewhere else where they can begin again. They seem also ready to begin a new
life until Hiroshi finally shows up, admitting that he has stolen a rather
large sum of money from the record store cash register which he cannot pay.
Suddenly Joji is convinced that he must live up to his responsibility
and help Hiroshi. And they plan one last heist, this against the very business
where Tokiko works. It is quite obvious, however, that it is not Hiroshi they
are hoping to protect, but his sister who will surely lose her job and her
reputation when the fact of the missing money is discovered.
In
an almost comic scene, the two rob the bosses’ son in his office, forcing him
to pay in cash.
The heist goes awry, however, and the police
are quickly on their tail. Tokiko is charged with returning to their flat to
pack their suitcases, whole Joji delivers the money to Hiroshi. But when he
returns she is not packed and refuses to help him escape, insisting that the
only way they can
truly begin over is to turn themselves in,
serve their sentences, and come out as changed people.
Joji refuses, attempting to escape while dragging Tokiko along with him.
But finally, she shoots him in the leg and, unable, to continue their escape,
they are forced to wait for the police, as they huddle together in their last gasps
of passion for a very long while.
In
the end, accordingly, despite the several social and sexual abnormalities of
Ozu’s work, nearly all of its figures are brought back into the fold of
normative society—all presumably because of the traditional icon of Japanese
conventionality Kazuko.
Los Angeles, December 22, 2023
Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog
(December 2023).
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