A quaint example of Ozu's early work - Dragnet Queen

For the most part Ozu's 1933 silent, Dragnet Queen, is little more than a curiosity and a chance for us to see some of the intimations in this early work as to what will constitute the Ozu style - most notably his famous "tatami" angles, shooting domestic scenes from the viewpoint of one sitting on a tatimi mat, which gives each scene a personal and intimate mood while, oddly, at the same time making some of the characters loom over the action, godlike and frightening. The downside is that much of Ozu's later work depends heavily on dialog, closer sometimes to stage drama than to film, and all of that is lost in the truncated dialog of a silent film. Still, the plot is a bit unusual, as we follow a small-time gangster (and former pro prize fighter - I kept thinking he'd go back into the ring by the end of the movie. Wrong) whose "moll" works as a typist in some kind of office/business enterprise, where he's hit on by the sleazy boss (and son of the business owner). She uses his come-ons to her advantage, as she and the prize fighter put the squeeze on the guy at the end when they need money for a getaway. The highlight of the film is the gang leader's relationship with a young, wannabe whose pathetic attempts to join the gang - a rather feckless gang, by the way, that seems to be into nothing for notorious than an occasional brawl in a pool hall - despite the pleadings of his attractive and devoted older sister (with the the prize fighter, naturally, falls in love). The film notably has lots of night-time shots on the near-deserted streets of an unnamed Japanese city, and some claustrophobic shots in the fighter's apartment, whose walls are adorned w/ news clips and posters for various famous fights - the whole look of the film is dark and claustrophobic. We don't see much that's specific to prewar Japan - I suspect most or all of this was filmed on a stage lot - but we do see the beginnings of Ozu's interest in character relationships and settings - yet it's a long way from here to Tokyo Story.