Kaze no naka no mendori (A Hen in the Wind). 1948. Japan. Directed by Yasujirō Ozu. Screenplay by Yasujirō Ozu, Ryôsuke Saitô. With Kinuyo Tanaka, Shûji Sano, Chieko Murata. Digital restoration by Shochiku; courtesy Janus Films. US premiere. In Japanese; English subtitles. 84 min.
Largely overlooked in Yasujirō Ozu’s filmography, this unusually emotional and politically pointed effort surfaced a couple of years ago as part of a package of films by and with the glorious Kinuyo Tanaka, and it has now been fully restored by Shochiku. Like Mizoguchi’s 1948 Women of the Night, with its similar themes of feminism and tolerance, A Hen in the Wind was made at a time when the American occupation forces were attempting to “westernize” Japanese attitudes about authority and the role of women, and perhaps reflects an official intervention (Tanaka would be sent on a three-month trip to the US in 1949, as a postwar “cultural ambassador”). Tanaka is a young mother trying to hold her home together while her husband is away at the front; in a moment of desperation, she agrees to a tryst with a stranger, then confesses to her husband when he eventually returns. The situation seems shockingly melodramatic by Ozu standards, but it is resolved in the most Ozu way possible, through quiet reflection by the bank of a river.