In Dragnet Girl, we have Ozu's version of an American gangster movie (The Public Enemy and Scarface had been shown before Ozu shot Dragnet Girl), and of all his early work I have seen so far, this is by far the film that looks the most Western. From his choice of locale (boxing gym, night club, back room, etc) to the way the characters are dressed, everything evokes American gangster movies from the 30's. However, a lot of Ozu's stylistic attributes are already tightened. We get a lot of visual repetitions (the tracing shots that establish a locale, the RCA Victor dog, his constant framing of action through glass windows and doors), some shots that are echoed later (his close up of feet walking in the street like in What Did The Lady Forget, his knack to clutter the frame with bottles and glasses) and his use of 90 degree and 180 degree reverse shots in climatic confrontations.
The story centers on Jyoji, the leader of a small time gang, and his girlfriend Kokiko (Ozu, like Haneke, uses the same names over and over again, accentuating the thematic consistency of his oeuvre). When the young hoodlum Hiroshi joins the gang, Jyioji falls for his sister Kazuko. But she doesn't want his brother to lead a gangster life and pleads for Jyioji to throw him out of the gang. He does so but Hiroshi had stolen money from Kazuko's store. In a last job before going straight, Jyoji and Kokiko rob her boss to give Kazuko her money back.
It's very interesting what the weight of over 100 years of film history can do to a certain film material. While I enjoyed watching Dragnet Girl, I wasn't as invested in the story as I was with other Ozu films because it follows genre conventions so faithfully that I couldn't find much to get excited about (I already had this problem with Brian De Palma's Carlito's Way). While Ozu's less rigorous but already very formalized style gives us plenty to marvel at, the script is not one of his most interesting. There are some things to think about though. We start with a relatively large set of characters which made me think that Ozu, instead of focusing on more "traditional" themes of the role of family in society using his trademark "extended family" device, was applying this "extended family" device to the world of gangsters. After all, a gang operates after the codes of family, and when we think back to the first years of The Sopranos, for example, the tag line on the DVD cover said "meet his two families", propping Tony Soprano in the middle of his family at home (wife, kids, mother), and his family at work (the gangsters he worked with).
If one continues this train of thought, one could read Dragnet Girl as a questioning of male authority as well. Jiyoji replaces the family patriarch and he too must come to terms with his masculinity. There is a dichotomy between Kazuko, always wearing kimonos, working in a store that sells classic music, and Tokiko who dresses Western style and is generally more of a spoiled brat. It's "tradition" versus "modernity" that clash here and Jiyoji must choose which model he will follow. Or, asked differently, with what type of woman can a man thrive? The ambiguous ending does not give us a definitive answer, but Ozu questions male-female dynamics not only when linked to the institution of the family, but in other settings as well.
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