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What Did the Lady Forget?

1937 1h 11m Comedy List
Tomatometer 2 Reviews 87% Popcornmeter Fewer than 50 Ratings
Caring for a rebellious niece causes trouble for a couple.

Critics Reviews

View All (2) Critics Reviews
Richard Brody New Yorker Ozu catches quietly violent feelings in images of a seemingly improvisational spontaneity, and he imbues the action with an exquisitely understated eroticism. Jun 29, 2015 Full Review Dennis Schwartz Dennis Schwartz Movie Reviews An amusing and poignant spoof on Tokyo's bourgeois. Rated: A Apr 6, 2011 Full Review Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View All (5) audience reviews
william d Usually Ozu's plodding pace leads to some satisfying moments at the end. Not this time. Rated 2 out of 5 stars 03/31/23 Full Review Audience Member One of Ozu's funniest comedies--Screwball comedy!! Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/22/23 Full Review Audience Member I think it is great! It's funny and smart, and at times it's thoughtful and considerate to its audience at the time. The script contributes much to the result, in which the dialogues play a significant role to drive the characters, and much-less the audience, to build some kind of realistic caricaturization of the society. The clashing behaviors, probably due to the changing times and culture, between the aunt and her niece also represent a seemingly dissonance of the role of women in society. I like particularly, the performance of Michiko Kuwano as the niece. The film is characteristically non-fluid, but the character Setsuko can burn all of the serious faces and turn it into a smooth comedy. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/20/23 Full Review Audience Member Change of pace here for Ozu: lightly satirizing affluent, middle class suburban Japanese life w/ contemporary women and the henpecked husbands or ineffectual men in their lives. Observant of society while often very funny. See July 23, 2010 at the IFC Center, NYC. Rated 4 out of 5 stars 02/07/23 Full Review Audience Member Ozu's second sound film, though after the heightened sentiment and deep analysis of poverty during the depression seen in "The Only Son", this wisp of a comedy (71 minutes) feels slight. In a Tokyo suburb, a professor routinely submits to his commanding wife, a domestic situation that has left the man hunched and humbled. But when a young teenage niece comes to visit, with ideas about smoking and drinking and aggression, the meek medical professor begins to feel empowerment coming on. The fractious relationship between the forward thinking niece and the traditional aunt is the kind of generational gap that Ozu loves to play up, especially in his more famous melodramas of the 50's, but though this one is just a nominal comedy of the sexes, it's planting seeds for later greatness. And as always, the mise-en-scene is perfection. Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 02/01/23 Full Review Read all reviews
What Did the Lady Forget?

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Cast & Crew

Movie Info

Synopsis Caring for a rebellious niece causes trouble for a couple.
Director
Yasujirô Ozu
Screenwriter
Yasujirô Ozu
Genre
Comedy
Original Language
Japanese
Rerelease Date (Theaters)
May 4, 1990
Runtime
1h 11m