Yasujiro Ozu

[Michael Kerpan]

Bordwell has a long chapter on Mizoguchi in his new "Figures Traced in Light". I don't believe he is working on a whole book devoted to Mizoguchi. I find Bordwell's chapter on Mizoguchi more interesting (and valuable) than Le Fanu's whole book (a major disappointment).

The issue isn't whether Ozu's films reflect his Japanese-ness (of course they do, to some extent) -- but whether he was "the MOST Japanese" of all Japanese directors -- a silly meme that circulated in both Japanese and English-language film writing for far too long.

[zedz]

He was a great movie fan from the very beginning. Those who've seen I Was Born But. . . know its plot pivots on the father's ability to imitate Stan Laurel. Talk about Audrey Hepburn in a later sound film, right at the time of Hepburn's fame, is very Ozu.

And there's a rather prominent poster of Joan Crawford in The Only Son (which provides a partial answer to your earlier question, Michael).

[luxetnox]

I seem to recall more than one poster with Joan Crawford, but yes, there were many Hollywood posters in his films. Western influences other than film make appearances as well. There is a poster of Oberammergau complete with giant cross that appears prominently several times in A Mother Should Be Loved. Along with copious bottles of saki, american whisky is on intentional display, particularly Vat 69 in the early films and Johnnie Walker in the later films. Days of Youth is a college comedy, a genre typical in american film at the time, but skiing was a very recent european import to Japan. These together with the many instances of american kitchen products, focus on signs in english such as the american building names in Tokyo, children learning english, and adults imitating english phrases or joking about american manners such as Noriko's friend in Early Summer joking about her move to the countryside and having a white picket fence, a scottie terrier, and Coca Cola in the fridge, show that Ozu's interest in western culture was quite broad, at least on a superficial, material level.

[David Ehrenstein]

I've also heard that Ozu said that after seeing Footlight Parade he realized there was no way Japan could win the war. If the U.S. could employ that many people in Busby Berkely production numbers at the height of the Depression, then it was all ove.

[Steven H]

I wonder if there's any talk of translating Ozu's autobiography/memoirs? I didn't even know such a thing existed until a few weeks ago, and a well informed friend mentioned it as an invaluable resource. He said it had insights where Ozu brings up his early family life, and you can see it reverberate in his films (especially where fathers are concerned.) I think this might be it, but I'm not sure (I had a laugh trying to translate it, the best I could come up with is "A Story of Relaxing and Bookshelves").

[Arn777]

Ozu's journals have been translated and published in France. The book is bigger and heavier than a phone book, and I have only read some bits so far.

[David Ehrenstein]

Any dish?

[Steven H]

Here's the link for the french language edition (thanks for the heads up 4X21X30 a monster of a book) called "Carnets, 1933-1963". Doesn't seem like there are any copies available there, or ebay (there's a listing on Yahoo France, but I'm too broke right now.) Hopefully this will get translated into english, the Ozu audience seems to be growing, and there will probably be a demand (also, an edition of Bordwell's book would be nice to have in print.)

[Michael Kerpan]

Bordwell said (last year) that there was no prospect then of any republication of his book. He was hoping to somehow get it transferred to digital form -- and posted on his website. However, the logistics of doing this were daunting.

And there's a rather prominent poster of Joan Crawford in The Only Son (which provides a partial answer to your earlier question, Michael).

It's amazing just how many Hollywood movie posters show up in Ozu's early films. ;~}

[shirobamba]

Noel Burch´s oop "To the Distant Observer" has been published for free download as pdf file lately. It has a comparable amount of pages (387) to Bordwell´s Ozu (406), but only 1/3 of the amount of pictures (Burch approx. 100; Bordwell 308). The Burch pdf file is about 146.5 MB, which isn´t that much. The real problem with this kind of publication, as Michael assumed, concerns the pix. First of all the scans of the Burch pdf are very bad, far too light, but still readable. (But this is a secondary phenomenon, for I think they could look much better, if they would have been reworked after scanning.) And second and far more severe, more then 25% of the pix are removed from the pdf file due to rights problems. This is an unconveniency, but in Burch´s case doesn´t make the whole endeavour futile, for the pix in the Burch text are not necessary to follow his arguments. But for the Bordwell book, the pix are absolutely vital. Without them it won´t make any sense at all. Reading Bordwell´s preface with half a page dedicated to acknowledgements, I estimate he would have to spend years to secure the rights for an online publication of his book.

[zedz]

What Panorama releases did you get?

Hope you enjoy them?

I've got through half of my booty (Passing Fancy, An Inn in Tokyo, The Only Son, Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family), so here are some comments.

The Panorama discs are pretty rough and ready. The three earlier films seem to be good transfers (sharp, decent contrast) of very damaged prints. Still, I prefer this warts-and-all presentation to the digitally-scrubbed Record of a Tenement Gentleman on Tartan, which is rather soft and has lost quite a bit of filmic texture.

The image of Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family is softer than the earlier three, and the print is heavily damaged, particularly at reel changes. The soundtrack is very poor - dialogue faint, sound effects generally drowned out by hiss – especially in the third reel, where the background crackle drowns out almost everything (thank heaven for subtitles!)

The sound on The Only Son is decent. Passing Fancy is completely silent (but still begins, comically, with a bombastic Dolby Digital trailer); An Inn in Tokyo has a generic musical accompaniment that is passable, but seems pretty random and drops out entirely at times.

Passing Fancy I liked the least of the four. It has some great character bits, but is compromised by an arbitrary, implausible melodramatic storyline. We're not only asked to believe that, having fought to save his son, Kihachi would then abandon him, but also that he'd then do a further about-face for the sake of an out-of-place comic ending. If you ignore the broader plot, though, the film shows Ozu's characteristic perception and wit. The relationship between illiterate father and better educated son has been treated in plenty of films, but it's generally between a parent and their adult son, and the key-note is embarrassment, contempt or resentment, priming us for a syrupy reconciliation. Ozu shows us a completely different dynamic, and Tomio is yet another in his long line of superb, realistic child characters.

An Inn in Tokyo is a close variation on the key plot elements of Passing Fancy. The scrabble for survival is even more pronounced (and there are more mouths to feed), and generally this is darker in tone, with less comic relief. There's another sick child, another crucial debt, another desperate action to address the debt, the same misunderstanding about the nature of the debt, and another climactic abandonment, but this time without the comic coda. It's fascinating to see how Ozu can wrest a very different viewing experience from such similar materials.

The canard about Good Morning being a remake of I Was Born, But. . . becomes ever more unsupportable the more you see of Ozu. His films mercilessly recycle plot ideas, creating a web of cross-references that enrich our understanding of his working methods and worldview. Both The Only Son and Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family could be considered as anticipations of elements of Tokyo Story, though they are as completely different from that film as they are from one another. The Only Son involves a parent's disappointing trip to stay with her offspring in Tokyo, though the child is in this case a good person and behaves towards his parent in exemplary fashion: it's almost the anti-Tokyo Story, and the film's beautiful, subtle tragedy rests on the difference between the son becoming a good man and a Great Man.

Brothers and Sisters anticipates the later film's plot thread of shuttling the (unwanted) parents from sibling to sibling, and ultimately outside the immediate family. This is hardly original to Ozu (it was hardly original to Shakespeare), but it's interesting to see how differently he handles the situation in the two films. Brothers and Sisters is far more didactic and theatrical that Tokyo Story, and the (mis)treatment culminates in a dressing-down by the newly returned youngest sibling (like Cordelia returning from France to bitch-slap Goneril and Regan into line – maybe this is the anti-Ran?) It's nevertheless a terrific film. Ozu employs a lot of long shots, possibly to ensure that we take note of the architectural details that say so much about the characters, and he's working on the sprawling narrative scale that he'd refine to some kind of perfection in Early Summer. When the narrative strays slightly, Ozu delivers some real gems of scenes: the grandmother's time out with her grandson; Setsuko's satirical deconstruction of the highfalutin guests' leftovers. The conclusion of the film may be tidy and theatrical, but Ozu manages to contrive a gorgeous open ending with his whimsical final shot of Shojiro running across the beach (and away from commitment).

In these four films you also get a good sense of the range of Ozu. His characteristic style is steadily becoming established, and what camera movement there is is minimal, and generally incorporates some major static element (e.g. tracking to follow figures as they walk down a street or setting a camera on the running board of a car to gaze past the wheelarch and headlamps at Tokyo's tall buildings). The opening of The Only Son, in which a chain of establishing shots, each one carefully linked to the last by some specific detail, ushers us into the silk factory, is beautiful and inimitable.

Although he's conventionally associated with middle-class subjects, in these four films he ranges from abject poverty (An Inn in Tokyo), through working class subsistence (Passing Fancy) and lower-middle-class impoverishment (The Only Son) to the haute-bourgeois-fallen-on-hard-times Toda Family. In each film, money is a key issue, but it's treated differently from film to film. In the silent films, money is a central plot device, and we become acutely aware of the role specific amounts of money play in the lives of the characters (so much for a meal, so much for a doctor, so much for a stray dog). In The Only Son, money is less concrete, but it takes on an enormous symbolic weight: rather than serving the ends of plot, it defines or limits the relationships between characters. The mother's monetary investment in her son's education represents the life she's sacrificed for him; the son's borrowing from his colleagues represents the degree by which he has fallen short of his mother's hopes of success. With that build-up, the mother's parting gift (money for her grandson), while remaining completely ordinary, becomes completely heartbreaking.

[Michael Kerpan]

It sounds like the Panorama transfers of these early films aren't much different from the unsubbed Japanese ones.

With "What Did the Lady Forget", Ozu moved on to the upper bourgeoisie -- and its sound track is in better shape than the wartime films. (Highly recommended, btw).

My guess on "Todas" is that the screenwriter had run across "Make Way for Tomorrow" -- as a number of elements are quite reminiscent of the earlier American film. My sense is that the "epilogue" to this film undercuts all the youngest son's rhetoric -- he is (in fact) rude and irresponsible. Also, his denunciation at the climax is really way overboard (He chews out the innocent sister because she didn't keep herself informed -- but he too ignored the family situation completely -- until he came back -- obviously writing letters was too much work).

"Only Son" really is wonderful (as is Choko Iida's lead performance) -- and Ozu's use of "Old Black Joe" at the end could hardly have been completely coincidental. I wonder what happened to Criterion's edition of this?

"Tokyo Inn" is one of my favorite silents. Some have complained about the melodramatic ending -- but I love it too much to care. It is a shame this is in such bad shape, but I'm glad it didn't completely disintegrate.

"Passing Fancy" grows on one. Yes, it is episodic -- and not all the parts fit perfectly. But within the scope of each scene, it really is quite wonderful. If you dont mind my self-promotion, here's a link to my article on this film.

[zedz]

My guess on "Todas" is that the screenwriter had run across "Make Way for Tomorrow" -- as a number of elements are quite reminiscent of the earlier American film. My sense is that the "epilogue" to this film undercuts all the youngest son's rhetoric -- he is (in fact) rude and irresponsible. Also, his denunciation at the climax is really way overboard (He chews out the innocent sister because she didn't keep herself informed -- but he too ignored the family situation completely -- until he came back -- obviously writing letters was too much work).

Yes. I think there's an implicit criticism of Shojiro in the final scenes which redeems and complicates the 'tidiness' of the film's denouement. After Setsuko agrees to allow Shojiro to find her a husband and he (grudgingly) agrees to allow her to find him a wife, he takes off. Having played the (bullying) patriarchal role at the Death Ceremony, he turns out to be the same irresponsible, unreliable, self-centred boy he was at the start of the film.

By the "innocent sister", do you mean the one who never put up the mother because they'd already decided to go to the abandoned house? Because she and her husband are clearly made somewhat culpable by their expressed relief at being skipped and their agreement not to push their filial responsibilities. After they're apprised of their mother's decision, the daughter scuttles off to share the "good news" with her husband, which is hardly admirable, if not on the same level as the explicit rejections of her older siblings.

"Only Son" really is wonderful (as is Choko Iida's lead performance) -- and Ozu's use of "Old Black Joe" at the end could hardly have been completely coincidental. I wonder what happened to Criterion's edition of this?

Wonderful indeed. The mixture of emotions conjured up by that final sequence is complex and powerful, and Ozu's choice of final detail (the barred, barbed-wired gate) caps it with a shocking finality. I'd love to see a cleaned-up version of this.

[artfilmfan]

There's also a chapter in Bordwell's book 'Post Theory' by Donald Kirihara, which is actually a response to Noel Burch's 'To the Distant Observer', that tries to dispell the whole "Japaneseness" angle.

I agree. From 1934's Passing Fancy onward, Ozu's films do have an "undeniable "Japaneseness" to them".

[Michael Kerpan]

By the "innocent sister", do you mean the one who never put up the mother because they'd already decided to go to the abandoned house?

I agree -- she's no angel -- but I don't see her as any more culpable than the youngest brother -- who completely forgot about his mother and sister while abroad.

Wonderful indeed. The mixture of emotions conjured up by that final sequence is complex and powerful, and Ozu's choice of final detail (the barred, barbed-wired gate) caps it with a shocking finality. I'd love to see a cleaned-up version of this.

The final sequence of "Only Son" is one of the most chilling I've seen -- on a par with the last shots of Mizoguchi's "Streeet of Shame".

[zedz]

Two more Panoramas viewed:

The Panorama There Was a Father is not a great disc. The image is pretty battered and somewhat soft, though a half-step better than Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family. The sound is dreadful: the very poor, noisy original soundtrack has been put through some ‘cleansing' filter that has left the sound (or rather the dialogue – precious little else has survived the process) hollowed-out and echoey. At points the voices have even acquired a phased swirl, so it sounds like Chishu Ryu is auditioning for a prog rock band or something. Actually, what it reminds me of is the sound of the movie coming through the walls in Goodbye, Dragon Inn. To be fair to Panorama, the subtitles on this release seem to be excellent.

However – and it's a big however – this is one of Ozu's great films, and his style and confidence is dazzling. For economy and speed of exposition, the first ten minutes of the film have few equals (the celebrated opening of I Know Where I'm Going springs to mind), and Ozu's transitions are consistently daring. You think that's been the set-up for the rest of the film, but then the next ten minutes condense a similarly feature-sized chunk of narrative, as do the ten minutes after that. In the first third of the film, we've been all over Japan and experienced several major upheavals in the lives of the central characters. Miraculously, none of this feels rushed, and Ozu has still had time to build up a pair of complex, rounded characters and indulge in leisurely mood-setting scenes. It's a phenomenal achievement, and completely worth suffering the less-than-ideal presentation.

After that phenomenal first half-hour, the film settles down into classic Ozu: no bad thing, but it lacks the audacity of the opening, and the never quite achieves the depth and power of The Only Son, which it superficially resembles. Chishu Ryu is, as ever, superb, and he ages so well over the course of the film that you're hard pressed to say whether he's playing older at the end or younger at the beginning. After this, of course, Ozu freely casts him at whatever age he needs, and he's always convincing. In A Hen in the Wind, he's the best friend of the actor who played his son in this film. Between Early Summer and Tokyo Story he goes from playing the brother of Haruko Sugimura's daughter-in-law to playing her father.

The prospect of the Cannes restoration of There Was a Father is mouth-watering. Has anybody seen it, or heard reports of its quality? From the looks of this disc it would have been a hell of a task. Were better elements discovered, or has this extreme makeover been entirely digital?

A Hen in the Wind is the best-looking Panorama disc I've seen so far: a decent transfer of a reasonably clean print that was good to start with: good contrasts and subtle shadings, only modest damage. The blacks may be a little light, but that's minor. The soundtrack is clean (and maybe cleaned-up, but not to the damaging extent of There Was a Father).

The film, however, strikes me as minor Ozu: uncharacteristically melodramatic, with rather shallow characterisation. In striking contrast to so many other Ozus, the child in this film is scarcely more than a cipher necessary for the plot. The final ten minutes strike me as particularly grotesque. Fortunately, this was only a momentary lapse, as he followed up with the magnificent Late Spring.

[Michael Kerpan]

The sound problems in "There Was a Father" come from Shochiku not Panorama. Some is very odd about the way things sound on this DVD -- it must be some sort of grotesque over-processing. (I have a dreadful looking off-the-TV video, nth generation, that is almost unwatchable -- but which doesn't have the icky sound problems.

I seem to like "Hen in the Wind" much more than you do -- though this has grown on me since my first meeting wit it. Glad to hear this looks good.

[zedz]

My Ozu binge has stalled halfway through Early Spring, mainly because of the quality of the disc. This is the worst-looking Panorama disc I've struck so far. The image is extremely dupey and murky, with dark halos around figures and objects. Indoor scenes, such as those at the office, are particularly dark, and it's hard to make out the characters. The subtitles are also pretty bad on this film. Line for line, they appear to make (often ungrammatical) sense, but they often don't add up to coherent conversations: way too many non sequiturs. So it's been a bit of a slog, but I'll press on.

From a stylistic standpoint, I was interested to see a small amount of camera movement in the film. When the characters go on a joyless hike, for example, the camera tracks discreetly along with them, and there are even a couple of very brief tracks in on the office door in establishing shots. Not as significant as those compelling, unmotivated tracks in and out that open and close so many scenes in The Flavour of Green Tea over Rice, but intriguing. Was this the last gasp of the mobile camera in Ozu's cinema? I don't recall any camera movements in his colour films.

[Michael Kerpan]

Unfortunately "Early spring" would appear to be too long a film for the DVD type used by Panorama. The Japanese DVD looks pretty good.

Not sure what you mean by a "joyless hike". I think most of the hikers had a good time -- and a couple seem to have had a real good time. Lots of humor in this sequence. And some pretty amusing camera action.

Definitely no "traditional" camera movement in the color films -- though the camera will move with the place it is located (as in the rather audacious opening sequence of "Floating Weeds"). What I can't recall is whether there is any vestige of camera movement in "Tokyo Twilight" -- I can't recollect any offhand.

[zedz]

Not sure what you mean by a "joyless hike". I think most of the hikers had a good time -- and a couple seem to have had a real good time. Lots of humor in this sequence. And some pretty amusing camera action.

Fair enough, but we spend plenty of time with the pair who are enjoying the hike least, and the happiest couple are the ones who get out of hiking altogether!

[Michael Kerpan]

Fair enough, but we spend plenty of time with the pair who are enjoying the hike least, and the happiest couple are the ones who get out of hiking altogether!

Ah -- but the happy hike-avoiders are the key couple in this segment -- and the unhappy ones are just there for comic relief.

"Early Spring" has an uncomfortable edgy tone that I think is found nowhere else in Ozu -- except in "Tokyo Twilight". Though it covers somewhat similar ground to that of "Green Tea", it is tenser and sadder. It is not as immediately engaging as many of the other Ozu films of the 50s -- and probably can never become as "loveable" -- but I find it more and more impressive the more I see (and think) of it.

[zedz]

Going back to Early Spring, I was less irritated by the execrable quality of the disc and could sink into the film itself, which is amazing. This is the darkest Ozu I've yet struck. (Tokyo Twilight is next on my list, and I hear it's similarly bleak).

The story elements are tough - infidelity, loveless marriage, dead children, unwanted children, backstabbing, chronic illness, suicide - and they're arranged into an insoluble puzzle. The final reconciliation seems grudging and desperate, rather than the indication of maturity it was in The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice, and the film also offers a rather pitiless deconstruction of Japanese corporate culture, something that had always seemed to me to be very neutrally observed (if occasionally satirised) in Ozu's other films.

In many respects, the film seems to be The Flavour of Green Tea transformed from comedy to tragedy. Once more, we observe several of the same narrative tropes (e.g. straying spouses brought back together by a forced relocation) radically rearranged.

I still can't get over just how astringent the tone is: many of the exchanges between the Sugiyamas are simply brutal (even read through the distorted lens of Panorama's comical solecisms), and though this is another of Ozu's magnificently rambling narratives, the cutaways to various subplots offer little relief from the downbeat tone.

A magnificent film that shows off what was to me an unexpected side of Ozu's talent. I'd love this film to get a decent presentation.

[Michael Kerpan]

"Early Spring" is a walk in the park, compared to "Tokyo Twilight". ;~}

If "Early Spring" looks at the devastating underside of corporate existence, "Tokyo Twilight" takes the same sort of withering look at quasi-traditional family life itself.

I think the ending of "Early Spring" IS more hopeful than not, however. Even if our central couple is not entirely happy, they have both genuinely changed their outlooks and expectations. If this is not a "happier" ending than "Green Tea" it is a more realistic and believable one. ("Green Tea" is a wonderful romantic comedy -- but a bit more artificial than Ozu's norm -- maybe even moreso than "What Did the Lady Forget?").

[Gregory]

I thought the reconciliation in Flavor of Green Tea had about as convincing and touching a resolution to the story as one could have in a film of less than two hours.
Also, I agree that Tokyo Twlilight has a totally different feeling from End of Summer. The latter was mournful in its final act but nothing like the tragedy and hopelessness of the former, to me anyway. And one of the most interesting things about Ozu's career is seeing how he used a varied palette to explore a circumscribed set of related themes.

[Michael Kerpan]

I thought the reconciliation in Flavor of Green Tea had about as convincing and touching a resolution to the story as one could have in a film of less than two hours.

I love the film -- and don't ultimately disagree. I think the artificiality is in the setting up of the dilemma. But once one accepts the premise, everything is worked out beautifully.

"End of Summer" is ambivalent, rather than mournful. The patriarch was not only a likeable rogue -- but a somewhat blighting force. At least for Hara and Tsukasa, his death freed them to make their own marital choices.