Silent Ozu: Three Crime Dramas

This collection from Eclipse, the barebones budget imprint of Criterion, is an apt companion to the company's earlier set of silent Yasujiro Ozu comedies, serving up three gangster films inspired by the late silent crime pictures of Josef von Sternberg, as well as other Hollywood movies. These films are more intimate character pieces than their American cousins, but all are lively productions that are directed with a dynamic style that Ozu stripped away in the later 1930s. Walk Cheerfully (1930) mixes gangster drama with character comedy in the story of a hood who vows to go straight when he falls in love with a "good" girl. More somber is That Night's Wife (1930), which opens with the robbery of an office building (a marvelous scene that is a model of crime movie direction) before revealing that the thief is a desperate father whose daughter is on the verge of death. Dragnet Girl (1933) is the most flamboyant drama of the three, a redemption tale not of the gangster but his moll, who has a civilian job by day and dabbles in the criminal underworld by night. She's a real tough cookie idealist whose story is enlivened with fluid tracking shots, snappy editing, and striking compositions. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)