What Did the Lady Forget?
aka Shukujo wa nani o wasureta ka

Screening: May 9, 6:30pm

Japan
1937

Director: Ozu Yasujiro
Production Company: Shochiku Films Ltd
Screenplay: Akira Fushimi, Yasujiro Ozu
Cinematography: Yuuharu Atsut, Hideo Shigehara
Editor: Kenkichi Hara
Music: Senji Itô
Tokiko: Kurishima Sumiko
Komiya: Saito Tatsu
Setsuko: Kuwano Kayoko
Okada: Sano Shuji
Sugiyama: Sakamoto Takeshi
Chiyoko: Iida Choko
Uehara Ken: himself
Mitsuko: Yoshikawa Mitsuko
Fujio: Hayama Maso
Tomio: Tokkan Kozo

In Japanese with English subtitles
75 mins
B/W
35mm
Certificate TBA

Ozu's 36th feature, but only his second talkie (1936@@@s The Only Son was the first), What Did the Lady Forget? is a piercing satire on the foibles of the Japanese bourgeoisie. A professor of medicine and his overbearing society wife play host to their niece from Osaka, who arrives determined to teach Tokyo what modern fun is all about. The hen-pecked hubby, claiming a prior golfing engagement, hightails it out of the home, but is soon discovered by his niece in a Ginza geisha house, where she insists on joining him in the drunken fun. Compared to the work of Jacques Tati and Ernst Lubitsch, and cited as one of Ozu's most underrated sound films, the movie lampoons upper-class Japan's "obsession with cleanliness; its eclectic bric-a-brac; its acquisitive conception of tradition; its bluntness. The social comedy of The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice, Equinox Flower, Late Autumn, and An Autumn Afternoon can all be traced back to this film" (David Bordwell).

A sublime comedy of coming and going. Light, effortless, fresh, and truthful. Nathaniel Dorsky.

Internet Movie Database listing