Dragnet Girl – Japanese title: Hijosen no onna Ozu Yasujiro 1933
In this film, Ozu ventured outside his habitual terrain, in setting and genre. Normally he concentrated on the everyday rituals of the average family, on the rifts and rapprochements between parents and children as they swing between resistance and conformity to social pressures on matters of wide public concern – changes in marriage, education and employment patterns, shifts in morals and manners. In this film he focused on the troubled relationship between a gangster and his moll (who is also a member of the typing pool in a business company during the day). Not noted for his interest in sex and violence, let alone heterosexual relationships, Ozu would seem to be out of his depth. But he characteristically charms us with injections of humour, with visual rhymes and with homages to Hollywood, as well as demonstrating that he could extend his repertoire of imagery beyond washing lines, telegraph poles and kettles.