Ozu3 by Lewis Saul

Today:

*36. Hitori musuko (The Only Son) (9/15/36) (87 min.) [Sound B&W] [buy it here]
*37. Shukujo wa nani o wasureta ka (What Did the Lady Forget?) (3/3/37) (73 min.) [Sound B&W] [buy it here]
*38. Todake no kyodai (The Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family) (3/1/41) (105 min.) [Sound B&W] [buy it here]
*39. Chichi ariki (There Was a Father) (4/1/42) (94 min.) [Sound B&W] [buy it here]
*40. Nagaya shinshiroku (Record of a Tenement Gentleman) (5/20/47) (72 min.) [Sound B&W] [buy it here]

~~~

34. Kagamijishi (6/29/36) (24 min.) [Sound/Silent B&W clip of 17:36 here]

Ozu's only documentary was commissioned by the Japan Cultural Association to promote indigenous culture abroad. Kagamijishi is a lion dance in kabuki, about a court dancer who becomes possessed by a lion mask, and transforms from coy young maid to a fierce being with flowing mane. Shot in two parts, the dancing scenes were filmed in June 1935 using synch sound by the Tsuchihashi system. The silent, second part, shot in May 1936, takes place in the dressing room and shows the celebrated leading man Onoe Kikugoro IV reciting a poem. At the preview, guests commented on the unnatural expressions of the dancer and the authorities decided to withdraw the film.

It is astonishing to watch the very first Ozu images combined with live sound! However, instead of family conversations, we have beautiful Japanese orchestral music and some really amazing dancing!

• An excellent use of eighteen minutes of your busy day... 

35. Daigaku yoitoko (College is a Nice Place) (3/19/36) (114 min.) (Silent B&W NEP]

Ozu called it "a dark film" making the title ironic. The graduates return home and begin a hopeless search for jobs.

*36. Hitori musuko (The Only Son) (9/15/36) (83 min.) [Sound B&W] [buy it here]

A woman whose husband is no help to her at all raises her only son by herself, working hard so that he can be graduated from a university in Tokyo. Later, she spends most of her savings to visit him. She finds him married and with a child, and he, in turn, spends most of his money entertaining her in the capital.

• Another excellent Criterion release; paired with There Was a Father (1942).
• First feature film with sound.
• No commentary; but excellent interviews with Tadao Sato, David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Ozu scholars.
• The song Old Black Joe is incorporated throughout the score and is used at the very end as a kind of ironic commentary on the story...
• The background behind the credits is similar to the burlap weave which he began using in A Story of Floating Weeds. He does use the traditional weave for the intertitles.
• Ozu immediately lets us know that heavy business is to follow with an initial intertitle (in his first talkie!):
  • "Life's tragedy begins with the bond between parent and child. -- Ryunosuke Akutagawa"
    • (Akutagawa wrote the short story that Kurosawa turned into Rashomon.)
• The son's name is Ryosuke.
• An intertitle gives us the place and the time: "Shinshu, Central Japan -- 1923."
• The film begins with a self-referential joke ~ in many of his silents Ozu would show two clocks with a two- or three-minute differential; here we hear nine gongs, as the women carrying boxes filled with silkworms walk by ... it is 9:00 A.M. Silence. Then another set of bells begins to chime; Ozu cuts it off after the sixth ring!

Chôko Iida gives one of her finest performances as the mother.

The adult Ryosuke is played by Shin'ichi Himori. If he looks familiar, perhaps you've seen Kurosawa's Ikiru, where he plays the sole bureaucrat with a conscience.

In the first scene with Mother and son, he is telling her that his teacher wanted to know whether or not he was interested in going to middle school. He knows they don't have the money. She tells him that he doesn't need to go to middle school. And then she adds -- as if this were something much better than middle school:

• "I'll make mugwort cakes tomorrow."
  • (Or a version of Daifuku called Kusa mochi.)

This film is filled with scenes and images of contrasting reality and illusion. The son, who seems to accept his mother's decision, has actually already told his teacher that he intends to go middle school.

The teacher (Chishu Ryu) arrives and Mother learns this fact along with us, the audience...

Although not yet as consistent as it will become in a few years, Ozu here begins to film his characters in a straight-on, frontal position -- especially Mother...

At 0:13:54 an intertitle jumps us forward to 1935, still in Shinshu ... but just for a literal moment, enough to learn that Ryosuke has a job in Tokyo and that she plans to visit next year ...

At 0:15:19 we jump forward to 1936 and the place shifts to Tokyo ...

Ozu captures the train coming into the station with unusual grace; beautifully combining natural sound and score here ...

... and then a cut with a jarring perspective: the camera is right behind the large front-left wheel cover. Along with a headlight, this section of the car covers at least half of the frame! We see buildings and construction ...

... cut to the interior where Mother and grown-up son are smiling broadly at each other.

They get out of the car by the side of a field, which they have to walk through to get to his house. We never learn who was driving the car...

Sugiko, the wife, is played by Yoshiko Tsubouchi. (She was Otaki in A Story of Floating Weeds.)

Ozu and his makeup people did an extraordinary job on Ryu, aging him 13 years. He seems a beaten old man compared to the young professor in 1923...

A subtle bit of parallelism:

• Ozu films the sign outside the restaurant from the reverse side, so that the characters are backwards ...
• He gives Ryosuke a "paper charm" that "stops babies from crying at night." He tells him to hang it upside down.
• (The scene then cuts to the "reverse" restaurant sign, and then to the charm, hanging upside down in the house.)

Son takes mother to the movies. They see Willi Forst's Unfinished Symphony (1934). He explains that the film is a "talkie." Ozu shows us quite a stretch of the film, which is in German and does not seem to have subtitles. She keeps falling asleep.

Reality versus illusion. Back in Shinshu, Mother tells her friend that Ryosuke "has become a great man." She is still not happy with his degree of success, but her visit showed that he has become a good person (he helped the family of the boy who got kicked by a horse).

But the next scene shows the stark reality, as she ambles along the alleys of the factory, sitting down to rest her aching back. She is sad and begins to cry. The sweet strains of "Old Black Joe" accompany shots of the factory gates, ringed with barbed wire.

*37. Shukujo wa nani o wasureta ka (What Did the Lady Forget?) (3/3/37) (73 min.) [Sound B&W] [buy it here]

A bright and mordant comedy about the upper classes. Into the household of a hard-working, golf-playing husband, and a spoiled, indolent wife comes a modern young niece from Kyoto. Eventually husband and wife are reconciled.

Like Kurosawa (and many great directors), Ozu liked to stretch his chops and work in different genres. However, whereas Kurosawa might make a samurai film followed by a contemporary drama, Ozu works in sub-genres of his main area of interest -- the "home drama."

Here, we still are focused on the family unit -- however, in this film the families are all upper-class -- quite a change from the earlier films about poor, working families...

• The DVD requires a region-free player.
• This film (and the next one) are screaming out for a Criterion release ... The subtitles are adequate, but it is obvious that they could be better ... The print looks fine; I'm sure Criterion could even clean it up a bit more ... This is a fine film -- somewhat less than his best -- but in the end, quite satisfying.
• Remember Yamamoto from Days of Youth (1929)? That was Tatsuo Saitô playing the Harold Lloyd lookalike. Now, eight years later, we finally get to hear his voice, playing Professor Komiya!
• The archetypal role of Setsuko (Michiko Kuwano) is one Ozu's first portrayals of the "modern girl" a bit out of sync with her family and her society (she smokes, does what she wants, etc.) ...
• Chishu Ryu claims that this is one of only two films in which he does not appear!

A few standout moments:

• 0:01:44: the film opens with the exact same camera position that Ozu used in his previous film, The Only Son (at around the 0:16:00 mark). The camera is right in front of the huge front wheel cover and headlight and obscures more than half of the frame! (jaunty music featuring piccolo) ...
• At 0:02:30 Takeshi Sakamoto (Kihachi, etc.) makes his first of two brief appearances in this film; the henpecked husband going to play golf ...

A few nice gags for Saitô:

• 0:08:46. The professor is looking through a microscrope; he takes a phone call from Nakanishi while he continues peering through the microscope lens.
  • "I'm just testing now. Huh? It looks bad for you. Huh? You'll never have children." And then he hangs up. [We can only hope that this is a joke!]
• 0:11:09: During a lecture on encephalitis, he notices a student has fallen asleep. He has just mentioned "lethargic encephalitis" -- the other students try to wake him up -- and Komiya says:
  • "Like our friend here ... there's no evidence it attacks in winter ... so he doesn't have it!"
  • The class laughs and the guy wakes up, thinks class is over, gathers up his books, starts to leave, realizes the situation, bows to Komiya and returns to his seat...
• 0:15:24: Professor Komiya's assistant, Okada (Shûji Sano), is enlisted to become Fujio (Masao Hayama, young Ryosuke in The Only Son)'s tutor. He struggles with the problem ("Area of the sea is three times that of the land, three-fourths of which is in the Northern Hemisphere. How many times is the area of the sea in relation to land in the Northern Hemisphere?")
  • Fujio looks on patiently as Okada tries to talk it out. "Wait, I have just the thing!" He returns with a globe. Okada tries to use his hands to measure area. (How did this guy pass middle school himself?)
  • "Ah ... Ethiopia's over here!" Fujio is distracted...
  • In walks Tomio (Tomio Aoki, now a tall, handsome 13-year-old!), Fujio's friend, with a baseball mitt. "Studying?" "Yeah," responds Fujio. "Did you get question three?"
  • Tomio: "Sure. The earth's area becomes 1 then land area equals 1/4, so land in the Northern Hemisphere is (he leans forward to write it out) ... 1/4 times 3/4 = 3/16 ... therefore, the area of the sea ... understand? One-half minus 3/16 (Ozu now cuts to Okada, looking both embarrased and amazed) ...
  • "Where'd you get the half?" Okada asks Tomio.
  • Tomio looks up, slightly befuddled that this assistant professor doesn't get it -- "This? By calling the area 1, the Northern Hemisphere becomes one-half?"
  • "Oh, really?" Okada is genuinely amazed as he seems to put it all together. Tomio continues:
  • "So the equation is 5/16 -- that's the sea area -- so 5/16 divided by 3/16 is 1 and 2/3rds, that's the answer." Cut to Okada.
  • "Yes, that's right!" Fujio and Tomio exchange glances. Fujio:
  • "Where'd you graduate from?"
  • "The university"
  • "You did graduate?"
  • "Yes, I did."
  • "Junior high, too?"
  • "Yes."
  • Tomio: "And you studied arithmetic?"
  • "Of course."
  • Fujio, to Tomio: "So we've nothing to worry about!"
  • Okada: "It would seem so." The kids then begin to sing a very cute little ditty, untranslated.
• 0:19:24: The kids play a neat game they call "Hit the Spot." They give the globe a spin, close their eyes, and name a country, stopping the globe with a finger and seeing if their guess matches the spot where their finger landed.
  • Fujio: "France." (wrong: South America)
  • Tomio: "India." (wrong: Africa)
  • Fujio: "Canada." (wrong: the ocean)
  • Tomio's spin is interrupted by a knock on the door. It's Setsuko. They invite her to play.
  • The globe spins. She closes her eyes.
    • She has put her finger at the very top of the globe. "North Pole."
• This scene segues into a lovely change of pace, as Ozu films Setsuko and Okada walking (music: pedal guitar; Hawaiian). We see only their legs, even after they begin their conversation! He cuts to a frontal two-shot and then to a new camera position as the couple walks away, getting smaller and smaller. This cut lasts 13 seconds!
• 0:26:41: A bar in Ginza. L-R pan on sign in English: "I drink upon occasion, sometimes upon no occasion -- Don Quichotte."
• 0:30:02: A play. The women are smoking just outside the theatre doors, when they spot a movie star, Ken Uehara, playing himself!
• 0:43:04: Setsuko is reading a newspaper. There is a photograph of Marlena Dietrich, the same photo which Ryosuke had on his wall at his home in The Only Son. I think.
• 0:46:40: Komiya and Setsuko act out a farce when Mrs. Komiya enters the room.
• 1:06:05: This coda simply lifts up your heart, beginning with the Setsuko-Okada scene and ending with what might be one of the most sexually explicit scenes in the Ozu canon.
• 1:09:36: Komiya is about to get laid. Chimes ringing (NBC) ... finally chimes begin even notes which Ozu thrice times to lights going out. Beautiful...

*38. Todake no kyodai (The Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family) (3/1/41) (105 min.) [Sound B&W] [buy it here]

Ozu was called up to the shifting Chinese front in July of 1937 and returned to Japan in the summer of 1939. His next planned film was rejected by the censors, who declared it fumajime (unserious). So he wrote the script for this film...

After her husband dies, a mother and her youngest daughter move in with the eldest son. His wife finds this disagreeable and several family quarrels ensue. Eventually, the two women decide to go live with the second son, who has settled in China.

• Another good candidate for the Criterion treatment. Large chunks are plagued by sound problems, and I believe a better translation might make the film a lot more enjoyable for non-Japanese ...
• Ozu: "Before the war, no matter how many best-ten awards one received, the salary of the director was always the same -- not enough. I went to Kido and asked for a raise. He told me to make a picture and he would decide after he had seen it. So I made this one and lived much better after that" (quoted in Richie, p. 228).
• This film was Ozu's first big box-office hit and also won first prize in the annual Kinema Jumpo poll.
• In many respects, this is a dress rehearsal for Tokyo Story (1953). The main theme (the dissolution of the family) is perhaps hammered down a bit too forcefully compared with the later film -- but the comparison remains a valid one.
• There are many such groups of films in the Ozu canon which are very similar in story line (such as it is), but given slightly different treatments. (See I Was Born, But... (1932), Early Summer (1951) and Good Morning (1959); A Story of Floating Weeds (1934) and Floating Weeds (1959); Late Spring (1949), Late Autumn (1960) and Autumn Afternoon (1962), etc.)
• Masao Hayama, (Ryokichi) has grown up before our eyes (The Only Son and What Did the Lady Forget?).
• Perhaps Tokyo Story is a bit more accessible to Westerners because there aren't nearly as many brothers and sisters! In this film, it is a challenge to identify who is married to whom and which one is a child of the Todas.
• The one (beautiful) face that is recognizable from later Ozu film's is Kuniko Miyake, who plays Kazuko, not the most likeable of characters ...
• 0:01:28: A stately introduction (note the filmic rhythm), consisting of three pillow shots:
  • A long wall surrounding a home, with overhanging huge bushy trees (10 sec)...
  • Potted plants, babies (vibraphone accompaniment) (8 sec)...
  • Cameras on tripods (6 sec)...
  • Wide shot of cameras, people setting up chairs (13 sec)...
• 0:02:05: Three ladies (L-R): Ayako (Yoshiko Tsubouchi), Kazuko (Miyake) and Setsuko (Mieko Takamine). Another sister, Chizuru (Mitsuko Yoshikawa) enters the scene at 0:03:05. I believe that Ayako and Setsuko are Todas and Kazuko and Chizuru in-laws. Kazuko is married to Shinichiro (Tatsuo Saitô) and are the parents of the little girl. Chizuru is married to someone not listed in the credits and are the parents to Ryokichi; Ayako is also married...
• 0:04:16: Ryokichi tells his grandfather about an English class homework assignment:
  • He was supposed to write: "My sister is three years younger than me."
  • Instead, he wrote: "My sister is three years old and younger than me."
    • This joke is repeated verbatim in Good Morning (1959) ...
• 0:31:21: A pre-echo from Tokyo Story: As Shinichiro reads off the contents of the estate, Chizuru claims the tea ceremony bowls...
• 0:32:18: Shojiro (Shin Saburi), the youngest son, is the last to show up after the father dies (he was "fishing in Osaka.") His siblings seem to treat him like the "black sheep" of the family ... he gets a phone call and we soon find him drinking with friends. (One of them is Chishu Ryu.)
• 0:37:14: Takeshi Sakamoto cameo as antique dealer.
• 0:45:23: The myna bird as a pillow shot. Here Mother and Setsuko are moving in with Shinichiro and Kazuko.
• 0:51:48: Ryokichi shows his grandmother his snot under a microscope. Ozu loved stuff like this! ("Want to see more?" "No thanks.")
• 1:06:48: Very similar scene to one in Tokyo Story with Mother and Setsuko talking as they get ready to sleep, but with more action. At first, perhaps we think the piano music is on the soundtrack -- but it is actually Kazuko playing (I don't recognize it) late at night, which precipitates a polite fight...
• 1:12:35: The myna bird. They've moved again, to Chizura's...
• 1:30:52: Saburi (Shojiro) takes over the from here, with a powerful performance driven by a terrific script. One by one, he sends his siblings and their spouses shamefully out of the room. Finally it is just him, Mother and Setsuko. Ozu drives the film to the finish with plenty of emotion and yet ends on a sense of great ambiguity (will Shojiro marry Setsuko's friend, Tokiko [Michiko Kuwano]? will he succeed in making a match for her?)...

*39. Chichi ariki (There Was a Father) (4/1/42) (87 min.) [Sound B&W] [buy it here]

A schoolteacher is very close to his young son. When the boy grows up he is drafted, but the father has the pleasure of seeing him married to the daughter of his best friend. After the father dies, the son returns to carry on the family name.

• Paired with The Only Son in this excellent Criterion 2-disc set DVD.
• The existing print was edited by MacArthur's SCAP censors, particularly the reunion scene, which probably means that it did originally include references to the war (DVD booklet, pp.8 and 12)...
• It may be surprising to Americans who even vaguely remember that time (they would be in their 80's today) -- or those like myself who are interested in this historical era -- to learn that this film was considered one of the great propoganda films of the period. Unlike the Capra series, the Japanese policy makers decided that they would "couch their fight in anti-individualist terms, with the emphasis on self-sacrifice, fortitude in the face of hardships, and putting the nation's interests first" (DVD booklet, p. 8).
• It is somewhat instructive to compare this film to Kurosawa's own little propoganda piece, The Most Beautiful (1944).
• In my opinion, this film feels -- more or less -- like ever other Ozu film. The story moves along like any other Ozu script -- slowly, carefully, always caressing the details and letting conversations and slices of life play out naturally and evenly.
• Perhaps MacArthur sliced it all out -- but the only reference to the war comes when the son is drafted and passes his physical.
• A wonderful scene is reprised from A Story of Floating Weeds (1934). Father and son are fishing together, with coordinated swishes from their fishing rods. The scene is done twice in this film -- once when Ryohei was a child (Haruhiko Tsugawa) and once as an adult (Shuji Sano). In both instances, father and son are sharing the pain of pending separation:
  • As a child, Ryohei finally stops swishing and begins to cry.
  • As an adult, he continues the swishing and is sad, but does not cry.
• Chishu Ryu stars; he had "one of the leads" in I Flunked, But... (1930), but this is his first leading role in an surviving film...
• No commentary, but an excellent interview with Ozu scholars David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson.
• I love the final page of Criterion booklets. ABOUT THE TRANSFER:
  • "The new high-definition digital transfer was created on a Spirit HD Datacine from a 16 mm fine-grain master positive that is the best surviving element made from the original 35 mm nitrate materials, which no longer exist. The 16mm element shows every imaginable kind of wear and tear, including splices, chemical and mold stains, and minor instances of missing footage that could not be replaced. Despite significant efforts on the part of the Criterion Collection to repair the worst of the damamge, using MTI's DRS systerm, Pixel Farm's PFClean systerm, and Digitial Vision's DVNR systerm, no amount of digital image restoration can ever return the film to its original condition."

*40. Nagaya shinshiroku (Record of a Tenement Gentleman) (5/20/47) (72 min.) [Sound B&W] [buy it here]

A war orphan is found on the streets of Tokyo and sent to live with a middle-aged woman. At first she finds him a bother, but eventually she comes to love him. The boy's father is found and she must give up the child.

• The above link takes you to an "all-regions" DVD -- my own copy of this film is on VHS (New Yorker Films)...
• First of five occupation-era films.

It is worth taking a quick detour here to examine these five films in the context of the Occupation. Kyoko Hirano's fascinating book, Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo, (Japanese Cinema under the American Occupation, 1945-1952) sheds much light on the type of censorship experienced by the half-dozen or so first-rate directors in Japan at that time.

Akira Kurosawa, who made nine films during the Occupation years (I am counting The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail [August 1945], because it was censored by both the Japanese and the Americans!), had some pretty horrific experiences (see the Stray Dog [1949] brouhaha) -- but, all things considered, he seems to have gotten along pretty well with the SCAP restrictions.

Hirano devotes an entire chapter (pp. 179-204) to the complicated history of Kurosawa's 1946 No Regrets for Our Youth. Despite some mild controversy about the initial title card, and a few other political issues (Kurosawa claims that he was heavily pressured by leftist union elements), the film was exactly what SCAP was looking for in that first turbulent year of the post-war era (Hirano goes into detail into the specific relationships between the Kurosawa-gumi and the CIE [Civil Information and Education Section]).

Ozu did not return to Japan until February of 1946. By the time he was prepared to make a film, Shochiku gave him twelve days to prepare a script for filming. Never again would he work so quickly, he vowed. And he never did (most future scripts took 6 months to a year to write)...

Let us see how Ozu fared under the CIE restrictions. I will note the various issues when they come up:

• Chôko Iida gives a stunning performance as Tané. As one of the other characters says, her glare is enough to scare any little kid! But her range is astonishing as she delivers nuanced shades of anger and contempt at first and very gradually becomes the transformed, quasi-saintly lady at the end of the picture.
• The scene at the neighborhood meeting is miraculous. Chishu Ryu (Tashiro) sings a folksong -- accompanied by clinking chopsticks on sake cups -- extraordinary!
• Most of the film was shot in the studio. However, the coda was shot in Ueno Park where we see real war orphans sitting around -- smoking, scratching themselves, scrounging ...
• The statue of Saigo Takamori (with his hunting dog) was deemed to be too closely associated with feudalism and MacArthur ordered that it be removed. However, the Japanese people vigorously protested and it stayed ... [score one for Ozu!]
• Cruelty to children: two issues bothered CIE:
  • 1) The adults draw lots (although Kawayoshi [Takeswhi Sakamoto] has rigged the lottery!) to see who gets to schlepp the kid a long distance to try and find his father; and
  • 2) Tané returns home with kid, who was forced to carry a heavy sack of potatoes on his back.
• In both instances, CIE relented and allowed the script to stay as written! [Ozu 3, CIE 0]
• Ozu must have felt a bit wobbly on his cinematic feet after the long cacophony of wartime -- but he would soon find his stride in fine fashion ... with the film after the next one (Late Spring [1949])!