A Hen in the Wind

Ozu himself considered this a failure, but its tale of a soldier who returns home from the war to find his wife has resorted to prostitution in order to nurse their sick child shames many a lesser director's manifest successes despite its overtly melodramatic elements. The symmetrically structured narrative, concentrating first on the woman's plight, then on the husband's rejection of her and eventual reconciliation, and the outbreak of angry violence extraordinarily heightened against the placid domestic background, leave no doubt where Ozu's sympathies lie and of his concern for the erosion of the traditional family system.