A good movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it was directed by Ozu and since it was on YouTube, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, it turned out be some kind of vintage Japanese film noir and, for some reason, it also reminded me of ‘Mean Streets’ with these rather pathetic smalltime thugs doing seemingly nothing the whole day. I have to admit that I was actually surprised that it turned out to be a silent movie. Indeed, I have been focusing on older movies recently but, back then in the US and in Europe, they had already started to deliver movies with sound for quite a while already. Anyway, to be honest, even if the mood was pretty neat, the damned thing did feel rather messy though. Indeed, the lack of sound was actually rather disorienting and the lack of actual plot didn’t help either but it is actually quite usual with this Japanese master though. On the other hand, there was actually something quite fascinating about how the actors managed to compensate the lack of dialogues with their body language. Indeed, in contrary to most silent movies, the acting was actually fairly subtle here. Furthermore, even if Ozu never really cared much about the plot, he always managed to deliver some intriguing and complex characters and this movie was not an exception. Sure, they might all seem stereotypical, much more than in his future classics, but there was something quite genuine about the emotions displayed. Anyway, to conclude, even if it was definitely one of Ozu’s more obscure features and even if it didn’t blow me way, it was still pretty neat and it is worth a look, at least if you like the genre or if you are interested in this director’s work.