Yasujiro Ozu Movies
Yasujiro Ozu has been widely touted as the most Japanese of Japanese film directors. In fact, Japanese distributors initially refused to release Ozu's work abroad, fearing that the West wouldn't appreciate its subtle beauty at a time when films of Akira Kurosawa and Kenji Mizoguchi were winning award after award at international film festivals. Fortunately, such fears proved to be unfounded and Ozu is now recognized as one of cinema's truly great filmmakers.Yasujiro Ozu was born in the old Fukagawa district of Tokyo, to a fertilizer merchant, in 1903. He proved to be an indifferent student in middle and high school, frequently choosing to watch movies rather than tend to his studies. Later in life, he proudly recalled how he watched Rex Ingram's Prisoner of Zenda when he should have been taking the entrance examination for the Kobe Higher Commercial School. In 1923, after a couple of years as an assistant teacher in rural Japan, Ozu was hired as assistant cameraman at the Shochiku Motion Picture Company.
Early in his career, Ozu began to experiment with an idiosyncratic film style that ran contrary to the conventions of Japanese or Hollywood cinema of the day. He strove to reduce and simplify his film style. He cast such mainstays as the fade, the dissolve, and the pan from his cinematic palette. He shot solely from a low camera angle, using a 50mm lens, and he subordinated spatial continuity to visual aesthetics.
Ozu directed his first film in 1927, an otherwise unremarkable period film called The Sword of Penitence. In 1932, he began to hit his creative stride with the touching comedy I Was Born, But..., which was his first commercial success and is considered to be one of his finest pre-World War II movies. It was also at this time that Ozu began to develop his signature film style. During World War II, he made few films and those that he did, such as There Was a Father, all but ignored the conflict. After the war, Ozu reached his creative peak and made some of his finest films, including Late Spring, Early Summer, Floating Weeds, An Autumn Afternoon, and his masterpiece Tokyo Story, which is generally considered one of the greatest films ever made.
Far from the muscular narratives of Kurosawa samurai epics, the films of Ozu are simple, contemplative, and edged with nostalgia and sadness. Through the course of his long career, from 1927 to 1962, Ozu refined and narrowed the scope of his films to the bare essentials. His oeuvre, which is almost completely confined to that of domestic dramas or shomen-geki, is thematically quite coherent from one film to the next. Though the particulars of the characters might differ, they are all snugly enmeshed in the same quiet world. There are no heroes or villains, no wild successes or great failures. his characters are ordinary people leading ordinary lives. Conflict arises from natural changes in the relationship between parent and child, be it a daughter who is reluctant to marry and abandon her widowed father in Late Spring or a pair of young sons who realize the modest social position of their father in I Was Born, But.... Ozu's remarkable sensitivity to the human condition and his nuanced understanding of the patterns of everyday life give these seemingly mundane conflicts a tremendous emotional power rarely found in conventional Hollywood dramas.
Late in his career, Ozu became the target of criticism by the iconoclastic directors of the Japanese New Wave. Many decried his film style as rigid, while others criticized his refusal to address social issues. His quiet, transcendent vision of humanity, however, has stood the test of time and has been an influence on such diverse Western directors as Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch, and Martin Scorsese. Ozu died of cancer in 1962. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
Director Yasujiro Ozu's final film, and a rare outing in color for him, continues his quietly observed explorations of family dynamics in postwar Japan. Frequent Ozu star Chishu Ryu plays Shuhei Hirayama, an aging widower whose three children each depend upon him in varying degrees. The eldest, Kazuo, who is married, is a spendthrift who purchases a new set of golf clubs, then hits up his indulgent dad for a loan to buy a refrigerator. The middle child, daughter Michiko, is a 24-year-old still living at home and happy to be the domestic fulcrum between her father and her younger brother, Koichi, a willful teenager. Shuhei's conviction that Michiko isn't ready for marriage scares away a potential suitor in whom she is also interested. But the old man has a change of heart after a long drinking session with several buddies, who warn him that Michiko might wind up an old maid, trapped in the web of loneliness he knows all too well. He arranges a marriage for her, and she finds herself caught between her own desires and her duty to her father. The story ends on the late afternoon of Michiko's wedding day, as Shuhei returns to his home to face life on his own, resigned to the fact that his daughter's happiness comes before his own. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Shima Iwashita, Shin-Ichiro Mikami, (more)
- 1961
The highly accomplished Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu demonstrates his stylistic touch for deceptive simplicity, rapier wit, and nuances of melancholy in this well-wrought drama about a man in the declining years of his life. Manbei Kohayagawa (Ganjiro Nakamura) has a rich life on three different fronts. He is the head of a brewery that is having problems at the moment, the head of a family in which one widowed daughter needs his help in finding a new mate and the other needs him to help her make the right choice in a future spouse. Manbei has a strong devil-may-care streak and his solution to his burdens at the moment is to look up his old mistress and resume a relationship with her. His decision has unexpected consequences for himself and his family. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ganjiro Nakamura, Setsuko Hara, (more)
- 1960
Director Yasujiro Ozu (1903-63) was famous for dramas which focused tightly on the character of family members and friends making sacrifices for one another's happiness. In Akibiyori, a still-beautiful widow has a daughter who is sufficiently past the favored age for marriage to be in danger of becoming an old maid according to the norms of Japanese culture. Three mature men, friends of the family, get together to discuss the widow and her problem daughter. Despite the fact that they each would like to marry the mother, they agree that one of them should make the sacrifice of marrying the daughter. They discuss their marriage idea with the mother, not the daughter (as is customary). Somehow, the girl hears of it, and is infuriated. She has said all along that though she wants to get married someday, she wants to remain single for some time longer. Now she is angry enough to threaten to accept the family friend's suit simply out of spite. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nobuo Nakamura
- 1959
This 1959 Ozu production centers on the likable but fallible leader of an itinerant acting troupe ("floating weeds" being the Japanese name for such groups), Kimajuro, played brilliantly by Ganjiro Nakamura. The film opens on a lazy, stagnant river as the troupe lays spread about on a boat deck drifting downstream. It's obvious that they're a ragged bunch as they sit fanning themselves and smoking on deck. The boat pulls into a quiet fishing village where the troupe proceeds to canvass the town, hanging up posters and performing impromptu stunts for the inhabitants. Kimajuro and his actress mistress, Sumiko (Machiko Kyo), head to the theatre and secure their cramped quarters above the theatre's main hall. Kimajuro leaves to pay a visit to a local saki bar owned by Oyoshi (Haruko Sugimura), who, years previous, had conceived a child with Kimajuro. The child has grown into a strapping young man, Kiyoshi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi), who has a good job at the post office. Kimajuro, although clearly proud of his son, has refused to take responsibility for the child and Kiyoshi thinks Kimajuro is merely his uncle. Unbeknownst to Kimajuro, Sumiko has discovered his secret, and, infuriated, hires a young actress to seduce Kiyoshi. Terrified that his son is falling for this woman of loose morals, Kimajuro has to decide what's most important: keeping his secret safe or saving his son by acknowledging his paternity. ~ Brian Whitener, All Movie Guide
Yasujiro Ozu's Ohayo (Good Morning) is a comedy about a pair of boys who bring much trouble to their family and community by refusing to do very basic activities. The boys desire a television, but their father refuses. They are so insistent that the father eventually commands them to be quiet. They take him quite literally and refuse to speak at all, not even a typical polite morning greeting. Their impoliteness begins to weigh down both the family and the town as it goes against the ordered social structure of Japanese culture. The film is a remake of Ozu's earlier 1932 silent film I Was Born, But... ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- 1958
Equinox Flower (Higanbana) is one of the most lighthearted of Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu's "home dramas." Motivating the plot is a young girl's impulsive decision to marry. The girl's father had always expected that his daughter would first ask his permission to be wed, and indeed wait until he'd chosen her husband for her. After all, it is not only family tradition, but a cultural "must". But this is the 1950s, and the girl proceeds with her plans on her own volition. Dad's anger and disappointment over not having been consulted is played out in long, uninterrupted takes, allowing actor Shin Saburi to run the emotional gamut from comic discomfiture to moving pathos. As in most of his best films, director Ozu also collaborated on the script of Equinox Flower. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1957
As Yasujiro Ozu's final black-and-white picture, the 1957 Tokyo Twilight explores the emotional landscapes and nuances within a strained Japanese family. Two daughters - Akiko (Ineko Arima) and Takako (Setsuko Hara) - grew up under the sold guardianship of their father, Mr. Sugiyama (Chishu Ryu) after their mother walked out on the family. This created serious psychological problems for both young women that extended well into adulthood: Akiko now spends all of her free time haunting bars and pachinko parlors, looking for her boyfriend, while Takako withdraws from a severely dysfunctional relationship with her alcoholic husband, by whom she has one daughter. In time, Akiko meets a woman who claims to know her as an acquaintance from their childhood neighborhood, and senses that the lady might actually be her mother. This film ventures into slightly darker psychodramatic territory than much of Ozu's work, by courageously dramatizing and exploring issues such as maternal abandonment, broken families and substance abuse. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- 1956
Like most of director Yasujiro Ozu's work, Early Spring is a deceptively simple family drama: a middle-aged office worker, bored with dreary routines of his job and his marriage, succumbs to a brief fling with the office flirt. His wife inevitably discovers his infidelity, but when he accepts a transfer to the country, she follows him to start their life anew. Ozu's depiction of marital difficulties is hardly depressing. Instead he employs his signature warmth, sensitivity, and humor to create a touching, thoughtful film. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
As with much of director Yasujiro Ozu's work, a plot summary of this film does not do justice to the emotional power that Ozu lends to this sad, understated tale. An elderly couple, Shukichi (Chishu Ryu) and Tomi Hirayama (Chieko Higashiyama), leaves their small coastal village in southern Japan to visit their married children in Tokyo. Their eldest son, Koichi (So Yamamura), a doctor running a clinic in a working-class part of town, is too busy to show them around town, and their eldest daughter is occupied with her beauty salon. Only their widowed daughter-in-law, Noriko, played memorably by Setsuko Hara, is willing to take time off work to show the couple the sights of Tokyo. The older children arrange for their parents to visit Atami Hot Springs, but the unimpressed couple soon returns to Tokyo. Tomi stays with her daughter-in-law while Shukichi goes out drinking with some of his buddies, and the bunch complains about their vague sense of disappointment toward their children. Later, he stumbles into his daughter Shige's (Haruko Sugimura ) house late at night. On the way back to their village, tragedy strikes. The callous inattention that son and daughter paid to their parents becomes unamendable. Shige and Koichi quickly return to their busy lives in Tokyo after the funeral, as Noriko and youngest daughter Kyoko (Kyoko Kagawa) remain. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Chishu Ryu, Chieko Higashiyama, (more)
- 1952
Re-released in 1972, Ochazuke No Aji, or The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice, is one of those films whose transcendent simplicity transforms an ordinary story into something special. A man with very simple tastes and habits meets with growing exasperation from his more sophisticated wife. She treats him with increasing disrespect and nearly has an affair, but something changes her attitude and she returns to him with an appreciation for his simplicity and reliability. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
Writer/director Yasujiro Ozu combines two of his favorite themes--the culture clashes in modern Japan and the emergence of the independent Japanese woman--in Early Summer (Bakushu). Setsuko Hara plays a young woman of the post-war era who is promised in an arranged marriage. But too much has happened in the world and in the girl's own life to allow her to agree to this union without protest. The characters in Early Summer are neither remote historical personages nor distant foreigners. They are types as easily recognizable in Japan as in any country, and this commonality enhances the universal appeal of this austere film. Yasujiro Ozu collaborated on the script of Early Summer with Kogo Noda. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Setsuko Hara, Chishu Ryu, (more)
Veteran Japanese writer/director Yasujiro Ozu's second postwar production was 1949's Late Spring or Banshun. Chisu Ryu plays another of Ozu's realistic middle-class types, this time a widower with a marriageable daughter. Not wishing to see the girl resign herself to spinsterhood, Ryu pretends that he himself is about to be married. The game plan is to convince the daughter that they'll be no room for her at home, thus forcing her to seek comfort and joy elsewhere. What makes this homey little domestic episode work is the rapport between Chisu Ryu and Setsuko Hara, who plays the daughter. Late Spring is no facile Hollywood farce; we like these people, believe in them, and wish them the best. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1947
In this classic shomin-geki ("story of middle-class life"), Ozu relates the slightly comic tale of a boy abandoned by his parents in postwar Japan. After his desertion, the little boy is discovered by a "tenement gentleman," who, in a gesture of kindness, decides to bring the boy back home with him. His kindness stops short of adopting the boy, however, and his roommate refuses to let the boy live in their apartment. Not wanting to forsake the child again, the tenement gentleman gathers the neighbors together and they draw straws to determine who will take care of him. The shortest straw belongs to a very unwilling middle-aged woman who lives alone and has little desire to take in an orphan. Nevertheless, her neighbors prevail upon her and the boy becomes her responsibility. After a series of misadventures, mostly involving the boy's bedwetting, a close relationship develops between the two and the woman comes to love him. Just as their bond solidifies, the boy's father returns and the unlikely adoptive pair are forced to part. At the film's end, the woman, moved by her experience with the young boy, opens a center for war orphans. ~ Brian Whitener, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Chishu Ryu, Choko Iida, (more)
- 1941
This early-'40s effort from legendary director Yasujiro Ozu prefigures not only the filmmaker's own masterpiece Tokyo Story in terms of mood and story, but also such sprawling family-ensembles as The End of Summer and Yi Yi. Todake No Kyodai (aka The Toda Brothers and Sisters) opens with the titular upper-class family posing for a portrait session, shortly after which Mr. Toda dies of a heart attack. As the remaining members of the clan mourn the death of their father, they learn that he's left them with a huge amount of debt. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
- 1936
This early talkie feature from Yasujiro Ozu deals with the difficult transition from the end of adolescence to adulthood. A group of friends in their final year of college prepare for graduation. Buoyed by their hopes for the future, they celebrate and have a good time. After graduation passes, they return to their hometowns and begin searching for work. One by one they all realize, ironically, that while college was a nice place, the real world is not. Their attempts to secure jobs prove fruitless and they descend into poverty. The symbolic nadir of the film occurs when one of them must pawn his new suit in order to eat -- which means that he can no longer look for respectable work. Those looking for copies of this movie are out of luck. At this time, there are no known surviving prints, although the Tokyo Film Archive does hold a preliminary script in its collection.
~ Brian Whitener, All Movie Guide
~ Brian Whitener, All Movie Guide
- 1934
One of Yasujiro Ozu's early masterworks, it concerns an actor, Kihachi (Takeshi Sakomoto) leading a struggling theater troupe who returns to the provincial town where he fathered a child years before. He seeks out his son, now a young man, and the woman who bore him, spending a great deal of time with them. To avoid angering his mistress Otaka (Rieko Yagumo), and to protect himself, he pretends to the young man that he is his uncle. Nonetheless, Otaka eventually learns the truth and persuades one of the company's ingénues to seduce the boy, hoping to hurt him and his father indirectly. Her plan backfires when the two fall in love, and the troupe, which is already on the brink of failure, is forced to disband. At length, Kihachi realizes he must move on and returns to Otaka. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
- 1933
In this melodrama of sibling love, an older sister must struggle to raise her younger brother on her own. Wanting only the best for her brother, who shows much promise, the sister works herself to the bone providing for him. His schooling costs more than she can afford, however, and she turns to prostitution, concealing her fall from her brother and his girlfriend. In the film's climactic scene, her brother commits suicide after learning of her sacrifice. The film also includes a great self-referential scene when the siblings go to the movies and see part of the W.C. Fields classic If I Had a Million. The subtly composed interiors and deft acting mark it as a work of director Yasujiro Ozu. ~ Brian Whitener, All Movie Guide
