What Did the Lady Forget?
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is a 1937 Japanese
comedy-drama Comedy drama, also known by the portmanteau ''dramedy'', is a genre of dramatic works that combines elements of comedy and drama. The modern, scripted-television examples tend to have more humorous bits than simple comic relief seen in a typical ...
film directed by
Yasujirō Ozu was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. He began his career during the era of silent films, and his last films were made in colour in the early 1960s. Ozu first made a number of short comedies, before turning to more serious themes in t ...
. In 2009 the film was ranked at No. 59 on the list of the ''Greatest Japanese Films of All Time'' by Japanese film magazine ''
Kinema Junpo , commonly called , is Japan's oldest film magazine and began publication in July 1919. It was first published three times a month, using the Japanese ''Jun'' (旬) system of dividing months into three parts, but the postwar ''Kinema Junpō'' ha ...
''.


Plot

Komiya is a good-natured professor of medicine at a Tokyo university, who lives in a childless marriage with his strict wife Tokiko. When his niece from
Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...
, Setsuko, comes for a visit, Tokiko criticises her liberated manners, including her smoking in public, which annoys Setsuko. Tokiko asks her husband to go for his usual weekend golfing trip to
Izu Izu may refer to: Places *Izu Province, a part of modern-day Shizuoka prefecture in Japan **Izu, Shizuoka, a city in Shizuoka prefecture **Izu Peninsula, near Tokyo **Izu Islands, located off the Izu Peninsula People with the surname

*, Japane ...
, though Komiya is not keen. So as not to upset his insistent wife, Komiya leaves anyway, but leaves his golf equipment with his student Okada, and writes a postcard telling Tokiko that he's having a nice trip and the weather is fine. Setsuko follows her uncle to a
Ginza Ginza ( ; ja, 銀座 ) is a district of Chūō, Tokyo, located south of Yaesu and Kyōbashi, west of Tsukiji, east of Yūrakuchō and Uchisaiwaichō, and north of Shinbashi. It is a popular upscale shopping area of Tokyo, with numerous intern ...
bar, and insists on Komiya taking her to visit a geisha house, where she gets drunk. Komiya asks Okada to take Setsuko back to his home, where Tokiko is displeased about her niece's behaviour. He stays overnight at Okada's place, worried about the rainy weather which would have made the golfing trip, which he wrote about in his postcard, impossible. When Komiya returns home, Tokiko demands that he lectures Setsuko. While he pretends to do so, he secretly asks Setsuko to intercept the traitorous postcard. Unfortunately Setsuko fails, and Tokiko reads the card and discovers Komiya's untruthfulness. She loses her temper before the two, who leave to prevent any more friction. At the Ginza bar, Setsuko lectures her uncle for being henpecked and asks him to stand up to his wife. Upon their return, Tokiko asks her niece to leave and scolds Komiya for spoiling her. Unable to hold back any longer, Komiya slaps his wife. Setsuko secretly compliments her uncle for his demeanour, and then goes to Tokiko and apologises for causing trouble. Komiya too goes to Tokiko to apologise. When he goes back to his room, Setsuko scolds him for his inconsequence, to which he replies that it's best to "take the opposite approach", like scolding a child while praising on the surface, or in his case apologizing to his wife. When Tokiko meets with her friends Chiyoko and Mitsuko again, she talks about the incident as if she were enlightened by her husband's "manliness". Setsuko meets with Okada before leaving for Osaka, joking about how they would treat each other if they were married, and announcing her return for the university football game. In the evening, Komiya and Tokiko agree how empty the house is with Setsuko gone, sharing a cigarette.


Cast

*
Sumiko Kurishima (15 March 1902 – 16 August 1987) was a Japanese actress and master of traditional Japanese dance. She is often considered Japan's first female movie star. Career On her father's side, Kurishima was the daughter of , an actor and new ...
- Tokiko *
Tatsuo Saitō was a Japanese film actor and director. He appeared in more than two hundred films between 1925 and 1967. Career Saitō joined Nikkatsu studios, where he made his film debut in 1925, before moving to Shochiku two years later. He appeared in many ...
- Komiya *
Michiko Kuwano was a Japanese film actress. Career Kuwano was born in Shiba ward, Tokyo. After graduating from Mita High School in 1932, she first worked as a "sweets girl" for Morinaga & Company before entering the Shochiku film studios in 1934, where she g ...
- Setsuko *
Shūji Sano was a Japanese actor active from 1936 to 1977. A popular star of the Shōchiku film studios, he is best known for his appearances in the films of Yasujirō Ozu, Keisuke Kinoshita, Heinosuke Gosho and Hiroshi Shimizu. Selected filmography * 19 ...
- Okada * Takeshi Sakamoto - Sugiyama * Chōko Iida - Chiyoko, Sugiyama's wife *
Ken Uehara was a Japanese film actor. He appeared in more than 200 films between 1935 and 1990. He starred in ''Entotsu no mieru basho'', which was entered in the 3rd Berlin International Film Festival. His son is the singer and actor Yūzō Kayama. Sel ...
- Himself *
Mitsuko Yoshikawa was a Japanese actress who played in over 250 films, often under the direction of Yasujirō Ozu and Hiroshi Shimizu. She joined the Shochiku film studios in 1924 and gave her film debut in 1926 in ''Kujaku no hikari''. After the war, she becam ...
- Mitsuko * Masao Hayama - Fujio, Mitsuko's son *
Tomio Aoki ''aka'' was a Japanese film actor. Aoki became famous as a child actor after debuting at the age of six in silent films directed by Yasujirō Ozu. His leading role in Ozu's 1929 short comedy ''Tokkan kozo'' gave Aoki his nickname. '' I Was Bor ...
- Tomio * Mitsuko Higashiyama - Geisha


Popular culture

In one scene, Setsuko reads an edition of French cinema journal ''Pour Vous'', prominently featuring a photograph of filmstar
Marlene Dietrich Marie Magdalene "Marlene" DietrichBorn as Maria Magdalena, not Marie Magdalene, according to Dietrich's biography by her daughter, Maria Riva ; however Dietrich's biography by Charlotte Chandler cites "Marie Magdalene" as her birth name . (, ; ...
.


DVD release

In 2010, the BFI released a Region 2 DVD of the film as a bonus feature on its Dual Format Edition (Blu-ray + DVD) of '' Early Summer''.


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:What Did The Lady Forget? 1937 films 1937 comedy-drama films Japanese comedy-drama films Japanese black-and-white films 1930s Japanese-language films Films set in Tokyo Films directed by Yasujirō Ozu Films with screenplays by Yasujirō Ozu Shochiku films