Kinuyo Tanaka made a big progression across the course of her career, moving from sweet-faced ingenue to Japan's first female director.
Tanaka as "the soda shop girl" in Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?The last of Ozu's 1929 films and the first half of those he made in 1930 reveal a filmmaker in transition. He is in search of his voice in addition to how he can push that individuality out around the edges of the studio system's staid templates.
Sadly, out of the seven movies discussed in this chapter, only two survive in complete form. Fragments of three survive, and yet two more are completely, irretrievablty lost.
From 1930's I Flunked, But...