The Munekata Sisters (Munekata Shimai, Yasujiro Ozu, 1950)

Sister act

Ozu working for another studio?! The idea seems unheard of, like the director doing a film noir or shooting an explicitly erotic scene. But in fact Ozu's done at least one gangster flick (Dragnet Girl) and three films outside of Shochiku, of which this one was the first (the other two were his 1951 remake Floating Weeds and his second-to-the-last The End of Summer (1961)). As for The Munekata Sisters, Shintoho studios-- basically 'New Toho,' as the actors there had defected from the old studio due to labor disputes-- needed reputable directors and lured Ozu away by offering him more money: 50 million yen, or $140,000 1950 dollars (around $1.8 million today).

Does it show? Well... two sisters, Setsuko (Kinuyo Tanaka) and Mariko (Hideko Takamine) are at odds with each other, more in lifestyle and sensibility than anything serious. Setsuko is a demure housewife who wears kimonos and geta shoes while Mariko wears Western skirts and blouses; Setsuko is all languid gestures and quiet subservience while Mariko is all brash opinions and tongue pokes and-- when she's being particularly provoked-- the occasional lip curl.

Wim Wenders in a Criterion Channel video expressed a kind of dismayed admiration for Mariko: she smokes, she drinks, she sticks her tongue out at her father and at polite company, she declares a dislike for temples, she even makes fun of the Buddha. When she meets Setsuko's former love Hiroshi (Ken Uehara) she describes a date Hiroshi and Setsuko had years ago like the narrator in a radio melodrama: "'It was a snowy night,'" Mariko solemnly drones. "'They were young. What's more, they were holding hands.'" "We never did that." "Silence! 'They didn't hold hands but they desperately wanted to.'"

Setsuko isn't as immediately engaging but it's her storyline that draws us in-- her engineer husband Mimura (So Yamamura) is unemployed and comes home drunk; Sestuko quietly puts up with his sullen resentful attitude. Mariko dislikes Mimura's treatment of her sister and has whipped up a scenario where Sestuko and Hiroshi start dating again. 

And Wenders is right-- Mariko is a wild one, to the point where she proposes marrying Hiroshi just so he and her sister can stay close. How's that supposed to work? Hiroshi has been taking her out, but their time together comes across as gentleman indulging his girlfriend's bratty sister-- is she attracted too? Somehow I'm not sold-- this feels like one of her wilder tactics-- but Ozu seems to have been preparing for this moment (as Ian Fleming once put it "nothing propinks like propinquity) and I'm thrown as much as Wenders must have been when watching this. 

Setsuko is quieter but it's her storyline that explodes in arguably the most startling scene in all of Ozu-- the only thing comparable is a similar incident (if you know you know) in A Hen in the Wind, and there one might argue Ozu was working out his anger at the kind of machismo that was responsible for plunging the country in war. This outburst seems to come out of nowhere, perhaps from the Jiro Osaragi serialized novel, perhaps from the fact that Ozu was working for upstart Shintoho and not straightlaced Shochiku, and the former was looking for something more sensational. I don't mean it feels unmotivated-- Mimura's brooding presence has been hovering around the margins of the film long enough-- but you wonder when how where why Ozu, whose precise control over his work is rivaled by only a very few (Kubrick, Lang, Bresson come to mind), would allow for this moment in this story, at this point of his career?

Even more uncharacteristic is what follows, not just Mimura's ultimate fate (about the closest Ozu has ever come to depicting such a thing directly onscreen) but Setsuko's decisions following-- watching her talk to Hiroshi, I kept thinking to myself: "This is bullshit, she's rationalizing"-- and (again) blamed Osaragi, and Shintoho. I'm often surprised by what people do in Ozu's films but never actually rejected what they did, out of sheer disbelief. This isn't the filmmaker I know-- maybe a rawer, cruder version gone power-mad from a minor bump in budget, plus no one at hand willing to say 'no!' to his face; I was about ready to stop the film and walk away, I was that dismayed. 

But all is resolved in the finale between the two sisters: Setsuko explains herself, and her declaration ("I want to do what feels right") and transcendentally serene face seem to carry more emotional weight than her halting words to Hiroshi-- possibly she was trying to let him off easy by coming up with some silly halfway romantic explanation, because the truth would hurt so much worse: that she doesn't really want anyone, least of all a man, not after years of putting up with one. That sentiment marks her as an unmistakably Ozu character, both practical and stubbornly independent, pulls the film firmly back in Ozu territory, where considerations are more quotidian than idealistic, with just the lightest sprinkle of the comic and the melancholic on top. Thank goodness, Mr. Ozu (as Aki Kaurismaki, yet another admirer, might put it*)-- for a moment there you had us worried. 

*(In another Criterion Channel video-- is it just me or are the folks there big fans?-- the Finnish filmmaker introduced himself to a small Ozu shrine thusly: "I'm Aki Kaurismaki from Finland.

"I've made 11 lousy films and it's all your fault.

"In London in 1976 my brother forced me to visit the Film Institute where I saw Tokyo Story.

"After that I gave up on my dreams about literature. I decided to begin my search for a red kettle.

"So far I've made 11 lousy films and I've decided to make another thirty because I refuse to go to my grave until I have proved to myself that I'll never reach your level, Mr. Ozu.")