A Hen in the Wind (1948)
Directed by Yasujirô Ozu

Film Review

An artist is seldom the best judge of the quality of his work, but for many years after it was made there was a general consensus of agreement with Yasujirô Ozu that A Hen in the Wind was one of his worst films.  Ozu himself came to loathe the film in later years, dismissing it as a 'bad failure', and it is one of the director's most overlooked works, barely seen in the West until quite recently.  Ozu's dislike for the film may stem from its starkly grim portrayal of Japan's post-war austerity, which is reflected as much in the bleak slum setting, where barely habitable shacks are dwarfed by soulless industrial monoliths, as in the people who inhabit it.  Critics of the time were quick to point out its lack of verisimilitude, such as minor flaws in the set design, which diminish the film's realism.  Overshadowed by the flawless masterpieces that Ozu went on to make afterwards, it is easy to see why A Hen in the Wind, a comparatively modest piece, should be forgotten.

And yet no work by any great filmmaker, Ozu least of all, deserves to be forgotten.  A Hen in the Wind is interesting because of its perceived shortcomings, but its greater interest lies in the fact that it is one of the few Ozu films to have been made during the period of American occupation of Japan, at a time when the country was on its knees, struggling to regain its dignity and prosperity.  Ozu's depiction of post-war Japan is strikingly different to the fetid realism that the young Akira Kurosawa brought to his films, Drunken Angel (1948) and Stray Dog (1949).  As in Kurosawa's films, the detritus of a shattered nation is visible in every exterior shot, but there is lyrical quality to the images that Ozu presents which suggests that things are not really as bad as they appear.  The industrial hulks that dominate the landscape and from which emanates a constant background throbbing sound, like the beat of a gigantic heart, suggest a country that is in the process of being reborn.  And this is essentially what the film is about: putting the recent past behind us and moving on.

In the disgrace of an ordinary Japanese woman who turns to prostitution to save her son's life, a selfless act which leads her to be estranged from her husband, we can read a crude metaphor for Japan's national loss of honour through the experience of WWII.  The story is one that is more typical of Ozu's contemporary Kenji Mizoguchi than Ozu himself, although there are some plot similarities with Ozu's earlier film The Only Son (1936).  Lacking Mizoguchi's almost obsessive interest in the plight of women in pre- and post-war Japan, Ozu's portrayal of the self-sacrificing mother is less convincing and veers dangerously close to Hollywood melodrama, despite an exceptionally moving performance from Kinuyo Tanaka.  By Ozu's own standards, the film lacks depth and subtlety, and this is apparent both in the crudeness of the characterisation and the over-dramatic incidents that make up the predictable narrative.

No other film made by Ozu contains such distressing elements as a (suggested) rape and a violent physical assault by a husband on a wife, two of the surprises that A Hen in the Wind has in store for its unwary spectator.  The fact that Ozu rarely employed violence in his films is what makes the sequence in which the heroine (Tanaka) is knocked down a flight of stairs so shocking.  Ozu even emphasises the brutality of the sequence by shooting the wife's fall head-on with one of his familiar long static shots.  The husband cannot bring himself to come to his wife's aid, so she must pull herself to her feet and climb back up the stairs to her living quarters.  It is an unbearably cruel scene to watch and the degree of violence, physical and emotional, is probably taken too far.  It is hard to believe that the two characters can ever have felt anything for one another before the incident, and we fail to believe that there can ever be a life for them together afterwards.  The reconciliation that Ozu contrives for them fails to ring true, despite the quality of the acting and the sheer elegance of the mise-en-scène.

As Ozu himself acknowledged, A Hen in the Wind is a flawed film, but that does not mean that it is one that should be dismissed as a failure.  The characterisation may not be as subtle as we would come to expect of Ozu in his later films, but there are some exquisite moments of truth and poignancy, such as the delicately handled scenes in which the indignant husband visits a brothel and begins to understand a woman's motivation for becoming a prostitute.  How the characters react to their straitened circumstances is also revealing of the Japanese psyche at the time of occupation.  When the women talk about how expensive things have become since the end of the war it looks as if they are sharing a private joke, not railing woefully against misfortune.  Life is a struggle, but a spirit of implacable resilience shines through all the characters in the film, particularly the women.  Despite its apparently grim subject matter, A Hen in the Wind leaves you with a profound sense of hope, a belief that however hard things get, it will all turn out right in the end.

Film Synopsis

In a slum district of Tokyo, not long after the end of WWII...  With her husband Shuichi still awaiting repatriation, Tokiko struggles to bring up their four year old son alone.  She has just enough money to get by, selling the few remaining possessions she has and working as a dressmaker.  But when her son falls ill, she has no option but to work for one night as a prostitute so that she can earn the money to pay for his medical treatment.  When her husband returns to her, she cannot keep this from him.  Shuichi is outraged by the shocking revelation and cannot understand why his wife would shame herself in this way.  He visits the brothel where Tokiko worked and questions a young prostitute there, so eager is he to discover why a woman would turn to such an ignoble profession...