Synopsis
Graduate Okajima finds his old-fashioned beard makes life difficult in a comedy exploring the tension between tradition and modernity.
The Lady and the Beard
1931 ‘淑女と髭’ Directed by Yasujirō Ozu
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Original Writer
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Primary Language
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Alternative Titles
Shukujo To Hige, 淑女与髯, 淑女と髯, La bella y la barba, La signorina e la barba, A hölgy és a szakáll, Девушка и борода, La Dame et le Barbu, 숙녀와 수염
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Theatrical
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Japan
Releases by Country
Japan
07 Feb 1931
- Theatrical
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Sixty in September: 24/60
A much looser film than That Night's Wife, we are unfortunately missing three films in between the two. But gone, for the most part, are the noir shadows of that film. This is a comedy that veers quietly into pathos. Starring Tokihiko Okada (Shuji in "That Night's Wife.")
And it is probably the closest Ozu ever comes to making a chanbara samurai film. We get pretty wild, comedic kendo in the opening, with Okajima striking outrageous poses and generally preening theatrically. He then wanders through the town, in almost full regalia, using his wooden sword to slap muggers in the hands. We're treated to his equally hilarious, for being out of place, kabuki sword dance at…
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This may seem like a much looser film than Ozu's previous effort That Night's Wife, but Ozu's favorite theme regarding the tension between tradition and modernity is still very much present. And, like many of Ozu's early films, this comedy has its share of pathos.
The film stars Tokihiko Okada, a striking presence who appeared in a number of Ozu's films from this period. Okada died in 1934 at the age of 31. What a tremendous loss. Japanese new wave icon Mariko Okada is his daughter.
Once again bearing the influences Harold Lloyd, Lubitsch and Chaplin, it features Okada as a bearded traditionalist Okajima, who wins his kendo match at the university and gets an invite by his student friend…
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Wow... What a lovely surprise. So pure, polite and well-mannered. Though Ozu took more experimental direction in this film and made it seemed like a looser film than his earlier works (more camera movements, for example), he chose one of his well-known main theme in here: modernization and tradition and the people circling the change. Technically it's not really Ozu, but thematically it's really his.
I really love how Ozu played the tradition-modernization theme with such a mundane instruments yet surprisingly so close to the heart. Beard, dance, kendo, golf, amulet. He chose some really nice vocabulary to write his poem, with such enchantment and formality. And each word works both ways as the bridge to connect two distinct things.…
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Lincoln had a beard. Marx had a beard. Jesus supposedly had a beard. "All great men have beards!" Okajima declares. But these bearded leaders also lived in a different century than Okajima, who adheres to a bushy way of grooming that has long disappeared and has made him something of a pariah in his contemporary culture. He can't find work (a favorite Ozu theme of the early college comedies) and the reason he can't find work is because of his old-fashioned, traditionally garbed, scruffy appearance.
He's a bit of an anachronism, Okajima. His character arc seems in tune with the arc of Meiji Restoration, from the passing fashions of "traditional" Japan –the Japan of beards, kimonos, kabuki dancing, samurai dress – to the…
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So this was kind of my true introduction to influential Japanese filmmaker Yasujirō Ozu since I watched most of this before pausing it to watch That Night's Wife which I ended up really liking but after coming back to The Lady and the Beard and finishing it, I sat there taking it in and well...it's painfully average.
There's a lot to appreciate here and I loved what it was going for and the messages and themes it covered with Ozu discussing acceptance, social norms, traditions, and modernity and how that changes how people view different things. All of these themes are very interesting and it only goes to show how ahead of his time and smart Ozu was by focusing…
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Only a slight repetitiveness of its satire holds this back from being another top-shelf silent Ozu, a sizeable step up in his mastery of comedy that also ends up maybe his first extended critique of the modernity his surviving silents to this point otherwise embraced wholeheartedly. The superior first half is a cavalcade of outstanding sight gags and Tokihiko Okada's full-bodied performance as the sort of man who proves that even a native Japanese can be an insufferable shinnichi. Despite a shooting schedule of barely more than a week, Ozu even assembles some tremendous compositions that show off his rapidly developing grasp of form (the use of shadow outside Kiichi's apartment or the blazing key light placed in the floor…
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The Lady and the Beard concerns the westernisation of an eccentrically old-fashioned young man, played by Okada Tokihiko, a big star at the time and father of Okada Mariko, at the prompting of a winsome young woman (who else but Kinuyo Tanaka could convince a man proud of his bristles to shave) to whom he finds himself drawn and is directed with the light and assured touch that was Ozu’s stock-in-trade in his early student comedies.
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fun to watch the movie transform from goofy slapstick to pressing women-led social commentary. neato.
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While not as strong as its immediate chronological predecessor, That Night’s Wife, which embodies some of the best of Ozu’s very formally apart, pre-War material (a camera that moves, less refined Vaudevillian comedy, stories of errors and manners that almost completely focus on one generation), I was surprised to find, at least on this viewing, that this still serves as the most affecting manifestation of the kind of story Ozu seemed to be reshaping and returning to, as is his characterizing and mastered method, from what I’ve seen at this point of his career: the small sweetness of youth and untested, forming love contrasted against the grander, potentially all-consuming harshness of an old, stubborn world and the effect of time given…
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Hiroko: Why do you have such a thick beard?
Okajima points to a picture of fucking Abraham Lincoln: Do you know why Lincoln had a beard? As a talisman to keep women away.
Hiroko: It's not working.
Sweet little Ozu silent. Not great, but still an enjoyable time. Was not expecting an Abraham Lincoln appearance though 😂
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Something of a spiritual sequel to I Flunked, But..., picking up where that film left off with a young graduate facing the realities of the outside world, in this instance a bearded Tokihiko Okada, whose facial hair, stern expression and traditional Japanese dress bears an uncanny resemblance to Toshiro Mifune in any one of the jidaigeki he would go on to appear in.
The comedic elements and satire is the same stuff Ozu had been churning out for some time now and isn't as fresh as it once was, but this film marks the first time another landmark theme is addressed, that of the cultural clash between modernity and tradition in a rapidly changing Japan, something that the director would…