"A Hen In the Wind" {1948} is quite a dark film and the gloomy mood is emphasised by the shots of post-war Japan with its poverty and slummy areas--the environment in which the events take place. It is this environmental context which focuses the moral ambiguities explored in the film.
A crucial conflict is created when a young wife, Tokiko Amamiya {Kinuyo Tanaka} accepts a once-off job as a prostitute to get the money to save the life of her young son. She finds the experience deeply shaming and the money attained, she never returns to the brothel.
However, when her husband, Shuichi, {Shûji Sano} returns from the army, she confesses to him what she did. The knowledge causes him to fall into a deep depression and generates an unforgiving fury. Later he visits the brothel {to see if indeed his wife had worked there on only one occasion} and meets a young girl who tells him why she feels forced into the trade. Strangely, the husband feels compassion for the girl and even gets her a job to get her out of prostitution.
I say "strangely" because even Shuichi's co-worker finds it odd that he can measure the girl by one standard and his wife by another. That he cannot realise that under terrible conditions, human fallibility may cause one to do what would normally seem unthinkable. Finally in a rage, he causes his wife to fall down a flight of stairs--and the shock seems to bring him to his senses. Thus the film does have a final uplifting moment with the reconciliation--but the basic problem is not solved; it is only resolved in this specific context.
The wife may seem rather like a door-mat to a modern audience but remember that the position of women in pre-war Japan was not particularly liberated. Given that, I think that Kinuyo Tanaka creates a gentle and realistic character. It seems that Ozu did not particularly like this film and considered it a failure--perhaps owing to the melodramatic plot and the difficulty of creating a convincing character for the husband who seems incapable of seeing the moral contradiction in his attitudes.
Personally, I liked "A Hen In the Wind" because it did honestly engage with the problems with making a moral decision in an extreme situation and the need for self-awareness, honesty and charity.
A crucial conflict is created when a young wife, Tokiko Amamiya {Kinuyo Tanaka} accepts a once-off job as a prostitute to get the money to save the life of her young son. She finds the experience deeply shaming and the money attained, she never returns to the brothel.
However, when her husband, Shuichi, {Shûji Sano} returns from the army, she confesses to him what she did. The knowledge causes him to fall into a deep depression and generates an unforgiving fury. Later he visits the brothel {to see if indeed his wife had worked there on only one occasion} and meets a young girl who tells him why she feels forced into the trade. Strangely, the husband feels compassion for the girl and even gets her a job to get her out of prostitution.
I say "strangely" because even Shuichi's co-worker finds it odd that he can measure the girl by one standard and his wife by another. That he cannot realise that under terrible conditions, human fallibility may cause one to do what would normally seem unthinkable. Finally in a rage, he causes his wife to fall down a flight of stairs--and the shock seems to bring him to his senses. Thus the film does have a final uplifting moment with the reconciliation--but the basic problem is not solved; it is only resolved in this specific context.
The wife may seem rather like a door-mat to a modern audience but remember that the position of women in pre-war Japan was not particularly liberated. Given that, I think that Kinuyo Tanaka creates a gentle and realistic character. It seems that Ozu did not particularly like this film and considered it a failure--perhaps owing to the melodramatic plot and the difficulty of creating a convincing character for the husband who seems incapable of seeing the moral contradiction in his attitudes.
Personally, I liked "A Hen In the Wind" because it did honestly engage with the problems with making a moral decision in an extreme situation and the need for self-awareness, honesty and charity.