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The Only Son/There Was a Father: Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu

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These rare early films from Yasujiro Ozu are considered by many to be two of the Japanese director’s finest works, paving the way for a career among the most sensitive and significant in film history. The Only Son and There Was a Father make a graceful pair, bookending a crucial period in Japanese history. In the former, Ozu’s first sound film, made during a time of intense economic crisis, a mother sacrifices her own happiness for her son’s education; the latter, released in the midst of World War II, stars Ozu stalwart Chishu Ryu as a widowed schoolteacher trying to raise a son despite financial hardship. Criterion proudly presents these nearly lost treasures for the first time on home video.

The Only Son

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Yasujiro Ozu’s first “talkie,” the uncommonly poignant The Only Son is among the Japanese director’s greatest works. In its simple story about a good-natured mother who gives up everything to ensure her son’s education and future, Ozu touches upon universal themes of sacrifice, family, love, and disappointment. Spanning many years, The Only Son is a full family portrait in miniature, shot and edited with its maker’s customary exquisite control.

DISC FEATURES

- New, restored high-definition digital transfer
- New video interviews with film scholars Tadao Sato, David Bordwell, and Kristin Thompson
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by renowned critic and historian Tony Rayns
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There Was a Father

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Yasujiro Ozu’s frequent leading man, the graceful Chishu Ryu, is riveting as Shuhei, a widowed high school teacher who finds that the more he tries to do what’s best for his son’s future, the further they’re separated. Though a delicately wrought story of parental love seemingly without ideology, There Was a Father’s themes of sacrifice were deemed appropriately patriotic by the Japanese film censors at the time of its release during World War II, making it a uniquely, if inadvertently, political film in Ozu’s career.

DISC FEATURES

- New, restored high-definition digital transfer
- New video interviews with film scholars Tadao Sato, David Bordwell, and Kristin Thompson
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by renowned critic and historian Tony Rayns, an appreciation of actor Chishu Ryu by Japanese film scholar Donald Richie, and a piece by Ryu on director Yasujiro Ozu
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Looks like July will be a The Only Son-double dip for me. Great to get a decent release of There was a Father.

One hopes that Criterion can manage to get a bearable aural track from somewhere -- as the spimd on the Shochiku DVD version was seriously damaged by attempts at restoration. (I doubt either of these films cqn possibly sound good -- in absolute terms -- but at least they shod sound "not messed up". ;~}

"There Was a Father" was my first Ozu. Turner Classic Movies showed it for Father's Day a few years ago and, despite the beyond-awful picture/sound (which I doubt has been tremendously improved, hence the two-in-one package), I was hooked on the director's style. Several (not not nearly enough) Ozu's later and it's come back full-circle. Instant mandatory buy for me with "The Only Son" as neat bonus.

OTOH, I see Only Son as "essential Ozu" and "There Was a Father" as an interesting outlier. ;~}

feckless boy wrote:Looks like July will be a The Only Son-double dip for me. Great to get a decent release of There was a Father.

Indeed, it's too bad these seem not to be available on their own. I'll definitely go for the BFI release of "Late Spring"/"The only Son", if only because I'm still missing out on "Late Spring". So I'm glad to have "There was a father", which is a genuinely beautiful and touching film, in a recording off arte TV (probably from the French release, and it looks quite acceptable).

> So I'm glad to have "There was a father", which is a genuinely beautiful and touching film, in a
> recording off arte TV (probably from the French release, and it looks quite acceptable).

This was based (I think) on a different source from the Shochiku DVD -- so it may look and sound better.

"There was a father" in that broadcast looked like you'd expect a relatively well-preserved Japanese film from the 40s. Not great by any means, but certainly it could have been far, far worse.

Tommaso wrote:"There was a father" in that broadcast looked like you'd expect a relatively well-preserved Japanese film from the 40s. Not great by any means, but certainly it could have been far, far worse.

Fingers crossed that's Criterion's source. No way could this description apply to the Shochiku transfer. I'm looking forward to seeing what Criterion has done with the film. This double-billing suggests that the transfer is acceptable, at least.

The box now has a spine, so this is 524-526.

Hmmm ... weren't we led to believe there was a Donald Richie commentary in the can for The Only Son? The only contribution listed from Richie is a reprinted essay.

Yes indeed - that was our original source for the information that Criterion had the film, I believe, and that info goes back about four or five years. There was another fairly recent example of a recorded commentary not being released, but I can't recall what it was. Makes no sense to me.

524-526: three spines for two DVDs. It seems the outer box gets its own spine number. What does that portend for the availability of the titles separate from the box?

Nothing whatsoever, I'm afraid: it's standard Criterion practice for all box sets (see I Am Curious for another two film / three spine number box).

There Was A Father blows me away every time I see it and I believe it to be the closest precursor to his 50s work. Maybe having to work within the confines of wartime censors here pushed him to his elision limits, but I see his films after There Was A Father to be much different from before.

Like Kinoshita's Army, using the parental worry to downplay the youthful war fervor does a lot to sap the juice from the propaganda. It's important to Ozu's body of work, emotionally complex, and beautifully shot (even among his other films, visually this one stood out for me.) Maybe I'm overselling it! Sorry.

Father is a HUGE advance over the Toda Family -- but not (in my mind) over Tokyo Inn or Only Son. I see the latter as the _most_ direct link to Ozu's later work (particularly because it provided a large part of the foundation for Tokyo Story). And while Father is visually gorgeous, I would say that story of Floating Weeds is even more beautiful.

The ambiguity of the ending (or would one call it the epilogue) does force one to re-evaluate what one saw before (and what one thinks about what one saw before) -- which is a very good thing. (Todas did something similar, but it seemed a lot less compelling).

But keep in mind, I totally love films in the middle of my Ozu list (then again, even most films in the bottom half of that list are loved or liked very much). ;~}

Both of these films are, to my mind, indispensable.

The Only Son was arguably the best of the early Ozu's, it's certainly in the top group. The two "war" films however are pretty much the bottom. Toda Family shocks you with its "Let's invade China, it's a nice place" attitude, but There was a Father suffers even more from a tedious screenplay with endless repetitions of fulfilling its duties and suffering for greater goals. Reminded me very much of German melodramas of the same time with their suffering women who sacrifice everything that can be sacrificed. Both films are a rather unpleasent reminder that even major directors like Mizoguchi or Ozu bowed to the demands of propaganda.

Lubitsch -- this film involves not only the father, but also the son and I think, in the end,

Spoiler

the son, shows that despite his admiration for his father, he does not accept the notion of (voluntarily) placing duty over family ties. He is willing to bring his wife's family to live with his wife and himself (if and when he returns from compulsory military service) -- which would have been a very untraditional accommodation to her personal emotional needs and his own long-suppressed desire to have immediate "family" even if by proxy

FilmFanSea wrote:Hmmm ... weren't we led to believe there was a Donald Richie commentary in the can for The Only Son? The only contribution listed from Richie is a reprinted essay.

About six months ago, David Bordwell mentioned in his blog that Donald Richie was hospitalized, recovering from pneumonia. It was about this time, too, that Richie's weekly book review ceased appearing in the Japan Times; it has yet to return. For individuals relatively young and in good health, pneumonia is a dangerous disease, but it is most serious for anyone who is 85, as Richie is. We can only hope and pray and send best wishes that he fully recovers.

I seem to remember Toda Family as being very unsympathetic to the main characters, but I have not seen this film in some time. There Was A Father seems to be entirely different, much more sympathetic with the characters and making a direct hit in showing how to emotionally undercut wartime censors. While The Only Son does provide a heavy nod to the 50s work, the idea of generational links seems more fleshed out, in that inimitable ambiguous way, in There Was A Father (which I consider a really important 50s Ozu characteristic).

I see Lubitsch disagrees with me and I can understand that... but working within the confines of state (or arguably, corporate, religious, etc) censorship is something that was a problem more often than not with 20th century filmmaking. I don't hold it against Jan Nemec that he was limited on what he could and couldn't say in The Party And The Guests and I don't think less of Ozu for working in the film industry during WWII Japan.

AisleSeat wrote:Donald Richie

But the indication was that Richie had recorded the commentary years ago. In fact, I think it was because he mentioned having done so that we first discovered the film was forthcoming from Criterion.

Matt wrote:

AisleSeat wrote:Donald Richie

But the indication was that Richie had recorded the commentary years ago. In fact, I think it was because he mentioned having done so that we first discovered the film was forthcoming from Criterion.

I can't recall the details, but I seem to remember that Richie himself mentioned he had done the commentary for this.

I think the original post has somehow vanished (or I can't find it), but I think it had something to do with a reference in the "Selective Guide to DVDs and Videos" section of the revised edition of his A Hundred Years of Japanese Film to a Criterion release of The Only Son and the fact that he had recorded a commentary for it. Maybe he was only expecting to record a commentary by the date of the book's publication and something fell through. But since there is precedent for Criterion recording a commentary and then not using it, it makes one wonder.

My distinct recollection was that Richie mentioned this during a pre (or post) movie speech at some US event.