You must act with dignity now that you're president.
The other silent Yasujiro Ozu film available for free on Criterion's Hulu channel this week (as part of its "Back to School" festival) is 1932's Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?, an early collaboration with screenwriter Kôgo Noda. Set amongst a group of friends struggling through their junior year of college, it initially seems to be centered on the studious Saiki (Tatsuo Saitô), who always has his head buried in a book, but then the focus shifts to the more easygoing Tetsuo Horino (Ureo Egawa). The son of a company president (Haruo Takeda), Tetsuo enlists his father's help in getting rid of the latest elegible bachelorette his uncle (Ryôtarô Mizushima) has tried fixing him up with. He needs his uncle's help, though, when his father suddenly falls ill and dies, leaving an untried Tetsuo in charge of the company.
From there, Ozu and Noda could have gone in any of a number of directions, but they chose to skip ahead a year to recent graduates Saiki, Kumada (Kenji Ôyama), and Shimazaki (Chishû Ryû) coming to Tetsuo in the hope of landing jobs at his company since they haven't found gainful employment anywhere else. Tetsuo even helps them cheat on the entrance exam (a replay of their underhanded techniques when taking them at school), which doesn't seem terribly wise to me, but hey, it's his company. It's also his prerogative to spontaneously offer a job to unemployed bakery assistant Shige (Kinuyo Tanaka), an acquaintance from his college days, and to announce his intention to marry her, which puts him at odds with Saiki since he's already engaged to her. When the reticent Saiki fails to fight for her, though, Tetsuo does what any friend would do and beats the living tar out of him, calling it "the iron fist of friendship." Well, that's one way to affirm it. A simple handshake and apology for trying to horn in on Saiki's action would have also done the trick.