The Racket (1928)

If I could point to one scene in The Racket that sums up the whole thing, it would be the first gun fight. Two rival gangs of mobsters, shooting it out in a bustling urban square—using, as their cover, several large trucks. On the sides of those trucks: the names of politicians. There’s an election coming up, you see.

Those trucks are rolling ads for men of high ideals. But inside them are men of violence. Wherever a politician goes, you can be sure there’s a crook along for the ride.

Dragnet Girl (1933)

To those of us who have seen Yasujiro Ozu’s masterpieces (Tokyo Story being the most famous of them), the silent films he made early in his career can seem strange. Ironically, it’s their familiarity that makes them so. Ozu’s mature works are famously minimalist: conservative in style, slow and contemplative in pace, alike in subject matter. But much of his early work, influenced by Hollywood and his own studio masters, has a more populist feel. This was an artist in search of himself.

He did not find what he was looking for with Dragnet Girl, a gangster (!) film with characters more reminiscent of Mikio Naruse’s later work than Ozu’s. But though Dragnet Girl is an anomaly even among Ozu’s silent films—and far from the best of them—it is still interesting to watch. Especially when considering the roles Ozu assigned to both women and children later on.