A woman sits slightly to the left of the frame. She is a plain looking Japanese woman wearing traditional Japanese garments and a pair of round-rimmed glasses. She has dark hair that appears to be tied back in a bun. She is probably between thirty and forty years old. She has one hand to her face, obscuring her mouth. Her other hand lies in her lap. Her left cheek shines with the stain of tears. She is looking up and to the left at someone in front of her standing outside the frame. She is sitting in a dark room, but there is light falling across most of her body and part of the room. In the background the shadow of a ceiling light is seen on the wall. The background is fuzzy, the frame focused on the woman. Two young boys are lying side by side on the floor behind her. They are under a blanket. Part of the blanket is caught in the light, but the faces of the boys are slightly covered by shadow.
The frame is from a scene from Ozu's film "I Was Born But..." The two boys lying on the floor are Keiji and Ryoichi and the woman at focus is their mother. The boys have just had a fight with their father. The boys were upset after having seen their father making a fool of himself in order to win the favor of his boss. The father explains that he has to submit to the boss in order to earn a living, but the boys don't understand. They are disappointed and angry at their father and throw a tantrum resulting in the one boy being spanked by the father. After they have gone to bed the mother watches them sleep, the father stands in the doorway. This particular mise-en-scene effectively shows the emotion behind the scene.
The emotion of the mother powerfully shows the sadness behind the moment when children realize their parents aren't as powerful as they thought. The tears on the mother's face don' just show the sadness coming from watching her family fight, but her sorrow for her children's future. It's interesting the way the mother covers her face wiping away the tears. It's almost as if she's trying to hide her emotion, wipe it away like she wipes away the tears. The mother isn't a particularly expressive character, she doesn't talk much or clearly show her feelings very often in the film. The focus on the mother and her emotional state is what makes this scene stand out so much. The mother is clearly a wise character, indicated by her glasses, glasses often being a sign of wisdom. If the mother is crying that must mean that her emotion comes from a place of deep wisdom. She knows that the fight between the father and sons meant more than just the average family spat. In her wisdom she can see what the situation of the father implies for the future of her sons.Will they suffer the same fate as their father? Will they have to grovel to their superiors like he does?
It's interesting to note the way the children's faces are covered in shadow. If the father is standing in the doorway that means the shadow across them could be his shadow. The boys are lying in their father's shadow, implying that they will one day follow him. It's also interesting to note the closeness between the mother and the boys. The boys lie close together with the mother beside them while the father is in another room. At this point in the film there is a loss of closeness between the father and sons and having the father waiting outside the room clearly reflects this. It's also interesting to see the warmth of that closeness between mother and sons. While the rest of the room is dark their is light over the mother and part of the sons. Even though you can only see the shadow of the lamp it still appears as if it's hanging over them in the room. Where there is a shadow connecting the father and the sons, light connects the mother and the sons. This is a really important visual image in a film that mostly concentrates on the relationships between fathers and sons. This mise-en-scene is very strong in the way that it shows this emotional and physical connection between the mother and sons. It really brings out the mother as an important figure in the film.
