BFI: 32 Ozu Films

[EddieLarkin]

Do we have an up-to-date "best available discs/versions" list for the extant Ozu filmography anywhere? At this point, I've lost track of which restorations have been released by whom, and I know there are extra factors like audio filtering as well.

1929 Days of Youth - BFI Student Comedies Set
1930 Walk Cheerfully - BFI Gangster Set
1930 I Flunked, But... - BFI Student Comedies Set
1930 That Night's Wife - BFI Gangster Set
1931 The Lady and the Beard - BFI Student Comedies Set
1931 Tokyo Chorus - Criterion Eclipse 10
1932 I Was Born, But... - BFI Two Films Blu-ray
1932 Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? - BFI Student Comedies Set
1933 Woman of Tokyo - BFI Melodramas Set
1933 Dragnet Girl - BFI Three Films Blu-ray
1933 Passing Fancy - Criterion Eclipse 10
1934 A Mother Should be Loved - BFI Late Autumn Blu-ray
1934 A Story of Floating Weeds - Criterion Blu-ray
1935 An Inn in Tokyo
1936 The Only Son - BFI Late Spring Blu-ray
1937 What Did the Lady Forget? - BFI Early Summer Blu-ray
1941 Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family - BFI Tokyo Story Blu-ray
1942 There Was a Father - BFI Two Films Blu-ray
1947 Record of a Tenement Gentleman - BFI Three Films Blu-ray
1948 A Hen in the Wind - BFI Three Films Blu-ray
1949 Late Spring - BFI Blu-ray
1950 The Munekata Sisters
1951 Early Summer - BFI Blu-ray
1952 The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice - BFI Blu-ray
1953 Tokyo Story - 2nd BFI Blu-ray
1956 Early Spring - BFI Melodramas Set
1957 Tokyo Twilight - BFI Melodramas Set
1958 Equinox Flower - BFI Blu-ray
1959 Good Morning - Criterion Blu-ray
1959 Floating Weeds - Criterion Blu-ray
1960 Late Autumn - BFI Blu-ray
1961 The End of Summer - Criterion Eclipse 3
1962 An Autumn Afternoon - Criterion Blu-ray

As far as I know, Late Spring, Early Summer, Early Spring, Tokyo Twilight, Equinox Flower and Late Autumn all have newer restorations still waiting for release in English language territories.

[andyli]

Since Shochiku blu-rays come with English subtitles, I guess they count as English-friendly releases.

Also, The Munekata Sisters has the 4k restoration available on Toho and Carlotta blu-rays. The End of Summer has a release from Carlotta that utilizes the latest 4k restoration.

[tenia]

Do we have an up-to-date "best available discs/versions" list for the extant Ozu filmography anywhere? At this point, I've lost track of which restorations have been released by whom, and I know there are extra factors like audio filtering as well.

Taking Carlotta's non English-friendly releases would yield this :

Spoiler

Days of Youth : DVD only : BFI The Student Comedies
I flunked but : DVD only : BFI The Student Comedies
Walk Cheerfully : DVD only : Eclipse Series 42 / BFI Gangster Films
That Night's Wife : DVD only : Eclipse Series 42 / BFI Gangster Films
The Lady and the Beard : DVD only : BFI The Student Comedies
Tokyo Chorus : DVD only : Eclipse Series 10
I was born but : BFI 2024 BD (4K resto)
Where Now are the Dreams of Youth? : DVD only : BFI The Student Comedies
Woman of Tokyo : DVD only : BFI Three Melodramas
Dragnet Girl : BFI 2023 BD (2022 4K resto from Imagica)
Passing Fancy : DVD only : Eclipse Series 10
A Mother Should Be Loved : BFI 2011 BD (with Late Autumn)
A Story of Floating Weeds : Criterion 2024 BD (older master but in HD)
An Inn in Tokyo : SD upscale only : Carlotta 2019 BD boxset
The Only Son : BFI 2010 BD (with Late Spring) (older master but in HD)
What Did the Lady Forget? : BFI 2010 BD (with Early Summer)
Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family : DVD only : BFI 2020 release (with Tokyo Story)
There Was a Father : BFI 2024 BD (2023 4K resto from Imagica)
Record of a Tenement Gentleman : BFI 2023 BD (2023 4K resto from Imagica)
A Hen in the Wind : BFI 2023 BD (2022 4K resto from Imagica)
Late Spring : Carlotta 2019 BD boxset (2015 4K resto from Cineric)
The Munekata Sisters : Carlotta 2024 BD boxset (4K Toho restoration)
Early Summer : Carlotta 2019 BD boxset (2016 4K resto from Imagica)
The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice : BFI 2020 BD (2017 4K resto from Imagica)
Tokyo Story : BFI 2020 BD (2017 4K resto from Imagica)
Early Spring : Carlotta 2019 BD boxset (2017 4K resto from Imagica)
Tokyo Twilight : Carlotta 2019 BD boxset (2017 4K resto from Imagica)
Equinox Flower : Carlotta 2019 BD boxset (2013 2K resto from Imagica)
Good Morning : Criterion 2017 BD (2013 2K resto from Imagica)
Floating Weeds : Criterion 2024 BD (4K restoration)
Late Autumn : Carlotta 2019 BD boxset (2013 2K resto from Imagica)
The End of Summer : Carlotta 2024 BD boxset (or Carlotta's individual 2020 BD if you prefer the color grading of the previous master)
An Autumn Afternoon : Criterion 2015 BD (2013 2K resto from Imagica)

Tokyo-Ga, from Wim Wenders, has been released restored on BD by Carlotta in France (no English subs).
The only surviving fragment of A Straightforward Boy is available on Criterion's Good Morning BD release.
The one for I Graduated But is available on BFI The Student Comedies. Fighting Friends Japanese Style is as an extra on Carlotta 2019 BD boxset, Kagamijishi too (on the Late Autumn disc, which has since been released individually), though it has since been restored in 4K in a possibly different version.

[hearthesilence]

As far as I know, Late Spring, Early Summer, Early Spring, Tokyo Twilight, Equinox Flower and Late Autumn all have newer restorations still waiting for release in English language territories.

I caught the Late Spring restoration when it premiered at MoMA. There was a restoration demonstration afterwards, specifying what they did, and when I went home I viewed my copy of the BFI Blu-ray for comparison. IIRC, they didn't find better source materials or necessarily do a better scan, it was really the post-scan restoration work that was improved and it looked like they did a lot more of it - basically the tedious and painstaking stuff like touching up every blemish and stabilizing every frame. The image stabilization really stood out when they showed an example in their demonstration - they really did a tremendous job of making sure the film was rock solid. The BFI Blu-ray isn't rock solid, but it's stable enough that it was never a distraction for me. The same could be said of the blemishes that were left in.

Long story short, if they ever release the new restoration on Blu-ray, that's great and it should be the one to get if you don't have this film already. If it never happens, we still have a Blu-ray of comparable image quality.

[senseabove]

Wonderful—thanks, Tenia!

[Stefan Andersson]

Update on A Straightforward Boy:

This film is listed at 14 minutes on the Criterion Good Morning bluray:
https://www.criterionforum.org/Review/g ... on-blu-ray

In 2015, a longer version was donated to a museum in Kyoto. It´s from a 9.5 mm print. In 2018, a DCP was made in the University of Rochester Digital Scholarship Lab. The runtime is given as 23 minutes:
https://events.rochester.edu/event/tokk ... sujiro_ozu

See also:
https://events.rochester.edu/event/tokk ... sujiro_ozu
https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/di ... lm-351492/
https://www.nitrateville.com/viewtopic.php?t=27439

Relevant info written by Joanne Bernardi:
"A 4-reel comedy short, Tokkan Kozo opened at the Asakuka Teikokukan in Tokyo on 23 November 1929. It was considered lost until 1988, when a partial 9.5mm Pathé Baby home entertainment version surfaced in a private collection. Blown up to 35mm by the National Film Center, Tokyo (now the National Film Archive of Japan), this 14-minute print was shown at Pordenone in 2001. The Pathé Baby version included in this year’s edition (a DCP made from a digital transfer by Imagica West) was part of a personal collection donated in 2015 to the Toy Film Museum in Kyoto. It includes additional footage adding to our knowledge of the film. This includes a title card, opening credits, a five-shot opening sequence that begins with children playing the hand game “rock, paper, scissors,” and an end title attributing the film to Shochiku’s Kamata studio.
The wording of the first expository card is the only other notable difference between the two extant Pathé Baby versions, although both titles refer to the weather. After seeing a video transfer of the 1988 discovery, Yuhara Atsuta remembered the film opening with the Shochiku company logo, a title card, and credits, followed by a long shot of a weather observatory, a closer shot of a wind gauge, and two or three other short cuts preceding a shot of a boy counting down during a game of hide-and-seek (the first action shot in the NFAJ print). It is possible that these “short cuts” correspond to the “rock, paper, scissors sequence” in the Toy Film Museum print."
https://www.giornatedelcinemamuto.it/an ... index.html

[pistolwink]

Has anyone here seen the European Blu-Rays of Record of a Tenement Gentleman? (I'm waiting to see if it'll come out in the US before I invest.) Curious to know how it looks and sounds. The film, in the versions I've seen, is one of the more beaten-up of Ozu's sound films, and some image stablization would do wonders, since the frame jumps around a lot on the Panorama DVD I used to have.

[tenia]

My review here : https://testsbluray.com/2023/11/22/test ... ujiro-ozu/
It's fine though kinda meh. It often has the picture almost dedoubling over itself because it's unstable, and looks very slightly DNRed. But it's a fine upgrade otherwise. The most recently restored track however isn't very good, though the older track provided by the BFI is much better.

[hearthesilence]

There Was A Father is a recent 4K restoration by Shochiku and is a longer version than the previous HD restoration thanks to censored propagandist scenes having been retrieved on a Russian print...

FWIW, having just watched it, I think reinstating this lost footage makes a substantial difference even though it amounts to only five minutes. The package says this footage was previously unavailable, and if that means few (if any) have seen it since the end of WWII, that makes Richard Brody's 2014 review especially astute:

Within this melodramatic schema, Ozu highlights the weight of tradition and of duty that crushes the individual spirit. In chilling details...Ozu reveals a society heading blindly toward the abyss — and destroying its future in the name of the past.

It's easy to spot the reinstated shots because they will be marred by scratches (albeit very fine scratches) that will stream vertically for the duration of the footage, and removing these shots seriously dilutes a sociopolitical context that IMHO is necessary to really make the film a potent criticism about Japan's values at the time. The father's motivations become much more rooted in the same philosophy that's cultivating self-annihilating nationalism, and as a result, the act of self-sacrifice becomes more than tragedy on a personal scale - it's reflective of something much larger and devastating on a cultural level.