A Hen in the Wind

"A Hen in the Wind" (風の中の牝鶏, 1948) is a Japanese drama by Yasujiro Ozu you can watch online on iFILM. The story opens in the wreckage of postwar Japan: Tokiko (Kinuyo Tanaka) is waiting alone for her husband to come back from the front.

Her small son falls dangerously ill. She has no money. Tokiko turns once to prostitution to cover the doctor's bill. Shuichi returns, learns what happened, and cannot hold back his contempt — or the violence that follows. Ozu watches all of this without flinching, and without delivering a verdict on anyone.

This is the harshest film Ozu made in the late 1940s. The restraint he brings to domestic life is still present — but it holds something colder here, the kind of damage a war leaves behind even in households it never directly touched. Stream "A Hen in the Wind" online on iFILM.