Good Morning

Yasujiro Ozu's Good Morning (1959) is essentially a remake of one of his earlier silent films, I Was Born, But... (1932) and his second color film. This film was also the one that Donald Richie focused on while discussing Ozu's script writing style and process in his book, Ozu. This film is somewhat of a departure since it isn't about his great theme, the dissolution of the family, rather it is essentially a light comedy about two young boys who ask for a television incessantly and are scolded for talking too much to which they say adults use too many banalities when communicating: Good Morning, Good Afternoon, and Good Evening being the main examples followed about discussion of the weather. As a result, the boys go on a silence strike, refusing to talk to anyone even at school, which causes some interesting scenes when they try to communicate that they have to pay that month's lunch fees. There are a coupe of other subplots related to unpaid community fees and gossip among middle-aged housewives. Surprisingly one of the motifs of the film revolves around farts-which seems about as as far as one can get from the usual refined Ozu of tea ceremonies and attendance at Noh theater. Much of the cast are Ozu regulars like Chishu Ryu as the father and Haruko Sugimura as the woman who has been thought to have taken the community fees to buy herself a washing machine. But the young boys who play the Hayashi brothers Minoru and Isamu steal the show with their performances.