It’s almost weird to see a Yasujirō Ozu film with such a mobile camera. That Night's Wife has dolly shots (most of which move primarily along a single axis, usually from left to right or from right to left) and zooms. I even spied one interesting transition where a shot that zoomed in on a closed door quick-faded to a shot of a person knocking on it from the other side while zooming out. That’s an almost Dada flourish by Ozu’s standards. I was also pleasantly surprised to find his trademark pillow shots on display. Anyhow, the first half is essentially a crime thriller about a criminal on the run from the police after robbing an office for money to pay for his deathly ill daughter's medical treatment. The second half is a quiet domestic drama where a snooping undercover cop is held hostage by the criminal's wife for the night so that she and her husband can stand vigil over their daughter for the night since the doctor said that if she survives until the morning she will make a complete recovery. Watching the film, I was fascinated by how Ozu's visual language and the physical performances of the actors managed to tell the story without dialogue. Now I'm developing a weird suspicion that the advent of sound had an adverse effect on his work since it forced his films to slow down enough to accommodate dialogue, thereby diluting his ability to be a purely visual storyteller. I'll have to investigate further...
7/10
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