Lost In Translation

That Night's Wife

That Night's Wife (1930) is another Yasujiro Ozu crime film from Eclipse Series 42: Silent Ozu-Three Crime Dramas. And like other early films there are visages of his later style, for example, there are several still life transitions used throughout the film. However, it is the youthful cinematic experimentation that always strikes me in the early films: camera pans, close ups and camera pull backs, and crane shots, because they are used so infrequently in his later films. In this film a desperate husband (Tokihiko Okada) is driven to robbery to get money to pay for the doctor of his ailing child. During the man hunt the ensues after his crime, he stops in at a payphone booth to check in with the doctor in a dramatic scene in which the police are closing in. He manage sot escape by taxi home, but it turns out the taxi driver was an undercover detective (Togo Yamamoto) who is determine dot bring him in. A tense evening standoff ensues when, the man's wife (Emiko Yagumo) turns the tables by using her husband's gun to prevent the detective from bringing him in until the morning when the doctor will arrive and give his prognosis on their daughter's sickness. It is a simple and melodramatic story that is told in a brisk 65 minutes.

Walk Cheerfully

Walk Cheerfully (1930) is the first film in the Yasujiro Ozu's Eclipse Series 42: Silent Ozu - Three Crime Dramas. Early Ozu films are quite striking when compared with the austere later films in which his style has become crystallized in a very identifiable pattern of film making. However, in Ozu earlier films there is much more experimentation with camera movement and foreign influences are much more evident-particularly the Hollywood influences. (The same is true of Mikio Naruse's early films as well). I note this, because I recently re-watched his Ozu's 1949 classic Late Spring. Walk Cheerfully is a perfect example of the early Ozu style, it seems to be influenced by the Hollywood crime dramas. Ozu employs innovative camera movements. For example, there are several interesting tracking shots: the film opens with a crowd chasing a man, a petty thief Senko (Hisao Yoshitani) who turns out to be the crime partner of the handsome and rough hood Kenji, a.k.a. Ken the Knife (Minoru Takada) and a camera mounted on a car to give a bird's eye perspective of the road. Ozu also uses bold set designs: including walls covered in American movie posters and a song written in English)—the kind of experimentation one would see much less of in his later films. In this film these two hoodlums decide to go straight after Kenji has met a citizen to his liking-Yasue (Hiroko Kawasaki), who implores him to go straight before she'll see him and Senko decides to follow suit. But this is not easily done since it involves spurning his crooked former squeeze, Chieko (Satoko Date) and former criminal associate Gunpeo (Teruo Mori). They will not let the former gang dissolve peacefully. Unlike most of Ozu's later films, this one has what would be called a conventional "Hollywood" ending.

An Inn In Tokyo

An Inn In Tokyo (1937) is an early Yasujiro Ozu classic silent film that tackles the issue of poverty in the 30s. It is generally considered one of Ozu's early classics. I believe this is the film in which many of Ozu's particular cinematic techniques were formed-for example the still life shots that are profligate in his later films. Even early in his career, Ozu tended to use the same actors and several of these actors can be seen in subsequent films (i.e. Choko Iida and Chishu Ryu) and have appeared in some of his previous films. It is the story of a father with two sons who are homeless and the father is in need of a job. They go from factory to factory looking for a job and the boys help out by rounding up stray dogs to get money for lodging and meals. There are several problems before an old friend helps the father out and gets him a job and a place to live, but it all goes south when the father steals money to help out a widow and her sick daughter. He leaves the boys with the family friend and turns himself in to the police. It is reminiscent of the Italian neo-realists in content and style and bears little resemblance to the family dramas in his late career that he is best known for. It is available on YouTube with subtitles here.

What Did The Lady Forget?

Yasujiro Ozu's 1937 comedy What Did The Lady Forget? seems to have been inspired the Hollywood screwball comedies of the 30s. Also, much of the plot would be cannibalized for his 1952 film Green Tea Over Rice. It stars most of the members of his marvelous repertory group are here: Choko Iida and Takeshi Sakamoto are reunited after An Inn in Tokyo(1935) as husband and wife; another Innalum and Ozu's go-to child actor, Tomio Aoki, appears as the schoolmate of Masao Hayama, another Ozu favorite. Sumiko Kurishima, the first Japanese female movie star in her only film with Ozu, stars as the frigid Tokiko, who reluctantly hosts her visiting niece, Setsuko  (Michiko Kuwano). It is the story of a henpecked husband Komiya who teaches a lesson to his overbearing wife Tokiko with the aid of his progressive and fast-living niece, Setsuko (Michiko Kuwano) from Osaka. There is a rare scene of melodrama in the film in scene where Komiya shows his anger of Tokiko's insolence by slapping her and then later apologizing-even though according to Setsuko she doesn't deserve the apology-it is a strategy Komiya calls a reversal and suggests that this often how wives are kept in line. It is a short film for Ozu clocking at 71 minutes, and one of his better pre-war comedies.

The Brothers And Sisters Of The Toda Family

The Brothers And Sisters Of The Toda Family (1941) directed by Yasujiro Ozu prefigures his greatest success in the west, 1954's Tokyo Story in this depiction of poor treatment of a parent by her adult children. The film was produced during wartime, so the fact that the war is such a minor aspec tof the film says a lot about Ozu's attitude toward this endeavor. At the same time, there must have been some aspect of the film that was deemed worthy for the nation to see since the film industry was under such close scrutiny of the government censors. I suspect that concept was filial piety-the idea of respect and deference toward elders. There are some traces of the aggressive colonial expansion reflected in the business interests of the youngest son of the family who scolds the older siblings for not taking proper care of his mother and youngest sibling. He vows to take them back with him to occupied Manchuria-colony of the Japanese empire, which seems benign in this film. But I suspect Chinese viewers might have a different perspective on this solution in the film. That being said, the film reflects many of the Ozu cinematic techniques such as still life transitional pictures and low camera angles. For many, this might be considered a minor Ozu film, but it reflects many of his most important cinematic techniques and is reflective of the wartime period in which he was forced to film. 

Record Of A Tenement Gentleman

Yasujiro Ozu's first postwar film, Record Of A Tenement Gentleman (1947), is an overlooked gem. In fact, film critic David Bordwell said in his book, Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema, that if Ozu had made only this seventy-two minute film, he would have to be considered one of the world's greatest directors. Many critics and reviewers have described the film as a light comedy. On the surface level this is an accurate description. However, Ozu’s treatment of this scenario is so seamless that it obscures how deeply the effects of World War II are reflected in every shot, setting, and character of the film. Once realized, Record of a Tenement Gentleman becomes less a story about the thawing of an elderly widow’s heart than a testament of the Japanese postwar blues delivered in Ozu's comic and bittersweet lyric style. In fact in a conversation through letters with novelist David Peace, Japanese writer Kyoko Nakajima reveals that her short story, "Things Remembered and Things Forgotten" for Granta 127, was inspired by this film. All of the characters are in some way itinerant: lost or have been separated from something dear to them. Tané (Choko Iida) is a widow, perhaps even a recent war widow, with a cold heart. Her kitchen with it hearth becomes a focal point in the film. The lost child, Kohei (Hohi Aoki), has been separated from his father (Eitaro Ozawa), a carpenter without a home. Tané’s two neighbors, Tashiro (Chishu Ryu) and Tamekichi (Reikichi Kawamura) are also rootless. Tashiro ekes out a living as a fortune teller. Tamekichi is an actor who also practices calligraphy and is estranged from his frivolous daughter Yuki (Hideko Mimura). Everyone in the neighborhood, including the soft spoken neighborhood leader and Kiku (Mitsuko Yoshikawa) survives by relying on the black market and on each other. The film ends at the statue of Saigo Takamori, the hero of the Meiji Restoration, and a place where war orphans gathered and gives promise for a new hope for Japan in the postwar era.

A Hen In The Wind

Yasujiro Ozu's second postwar film, A Hen In The Wind (1948) is unusual in that it deals with some melodramatic content. A married woman (Kinuyo Tanaka also starred in Mizoguchi's Fallen Women in 1948) prostitutes herself for a single night in order to earn money to pay for hospital bills for her son while waiting for her husband, (Shuji Sano) to be repatriated to Japan. When he returns she tells him and he has trouble accepting the fact, but after he meets a younger woman who was forced into prostitution and after he has injured his wife in a domestic incident can he forgive her and move on. Critic David Bordwell suggests that this film deserves to be better known for the unusual treatment of its conventional material and partly for the ways that it uses stylistic choices that would become common in his later films. In essence the film asks: what did Japan lose in losing the war? The postwar struggle of survival is laid bare. Bordwell points out that the film ends with a quiet resolve to ignore past mistakes and to face the future with an 'impure', but realistic hope.

Ozu And The Poetics Of Cinema

It's a shame that David Borwell's Ozu And The Poetics Of Cinema (1988) is out-of-print, since it is the definitive book in English on Japanese master director Yasujiro Ozu. Donald Richie's book, Ozu: His Life and Films, is also indispensable, but it only focuses on the late films of Ozu. Bordwell has studied all surviving films and therefore has a greater overall analysis of the complete career of Ozu. The first part of the book focuses on "Problems of Poetics" and is organized into eight chapters: 1. "Career" 2. "Backgrounds" 3. "Materials" 4. "Structures, Strictures, and Stratagems" 5. "Towards Intrinsic Norms" 6. "Freedom and Order" 7. "Pillows and Curtains" and 8. "Uses and Effects." In these sections Bordwell discusses the entire career of Ozu, his development, and other aspects of his film making. In the course of the general career discussion of Ozu he analyzes previous critics of Ozu, such as Paul Schrader, Donald Richie, and Noel Burch. Bordwell discusses their criticism and makes observations and judgements as well. In such discussion eh dismisses Burch's idea of "pillow shots," which are more accurately described as placing shots and point-of-view cutaways. It is largely easily readable for the general reader, however, there is a certain amount of academic jargon used when discussing the more technical aspects of filming. It was intriguing to learn that Ozu's three greatest influences were Charles Chaplin, Ernst Lubitsch, and Harold Lloyd. And that he was influenced by many more Hollywood directors such as John Ford and Leo Cary.

In the second part of the book he discusses the films individually and even has notes about non-existing films that have been lost. He makes several interesting and noteworthy observations about many of Ozu's films. For example, he uses Woman of Tokyo (1933) as a test case of Noel Burch's arguments of Ozu's work, since it is the film that he most frequently referred to in his study of the aesthetics of Ozu. Bordwell finds that most of his arguments are weakened by the number of omissions and inaccuracies regarding the film. Also, it was observed in the passage discussing There Was A Father (1942) by Masahiro Shinoda, a former assistant director for Ozu, that when the things that were in the frame at the beginning had disappeared or the position had changed; these were considered to be very dramatic by Ozu. It is something that he does often his films. I was surprised to see Bordwell's laudatory judgement about of one of Ozu's overlooked postwar films, Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947): "If Ozu had made only this seventy-two minute film, he would have to be considered one of the world's greatest directors."  In discussing Late Spring (1949) Bordwell notes that this film introduces Ozu the liberal who acknowledges the need for change despite the regret of the damage it will cause (rather than Ozu the conservative morning the loss of a way of life). He then points out that stylistically the film crystallizes intrinsic norms that will be central to the later films. In Early Summer (1951) Bordwell breaks down what he calls "the most stupendous camera movement in Ozu's career: a perfectly perpendicular rising which reveals Noriko and Fumiko as almost identical columns in a rippling expanse of sand." The effect is that it refuses the conventional high angle of the ordinary crane shot. It is a shot which Bordwell insists was quite worth the three days needed to set up. And he notes that in Green Tea Over Rice (1952), that he would never employ such flagrant camera movements seen in the film-the later films would be much more static in camera movements. To sum up, Bordwell has written a useful and revealing major study of one of the giants of cinema that is accessible to the general reader.

The Munekata Sisters

The Munekata Sisters (1950) is the first and last adaptation of a novel that Yasujiro Ozu would make. Shin Toho was created in 1947 focused on films by established directors like Naruse (Mother 1952) and Mizoguchi (Life of Oharu 1952). They offered Ozu the project of adapting a melodramatic novel by popular writer Jiro Osaragi's and cast some of Japan's biggest stars in Hideko Takamine, Kinuyo Tanaka and Ken Uehara, to star in it. Ironically, it was So Yamamura's performance that was singled out for excellence as the besotted failure Mimura. The story comes off as melodramatic even after a rewrite by Ozu and longtime collaborator Kogo Noda.  Tanaka would star as the traditional sister, Setsuko, who is conservative and wears kimonos throughout the film. While Takamine plays her modern, western clothes wearing younger sister, Mariko, who is prone to stick out her tongue at the drop of a hat. Mariko is trying to reunite Setsuko with her passive former love, the ineffectual Hiroshi (Uehara), in lieu of divorce from the brooding, jobless drunk Mimura. She wavers from trying to marry Setsuko off to trying to marry Hiroshi herself to bring them closer together. Even when Mimura collapses and dies at home-provoking only the scream in the Ozu oeuvre-Setsuko refuses Hiroshi, because she feels that the burden of having let Mimura down with her plans to leave him will cast a pall on the new relationship. There is a contrast between modern locations like bars in Tokyo and the antique shop in Kobe that is contrasted with temples in Kyoto and Nara as well as a villa in Hakone. The opening and closing of the film take place at Yakushi Temple in Nara is significant in that it is identified with the god of healing. It ends with the two sisters admiring the mountains in Kyoto caught between oppositions of tradition and modernity as well as past and present.

The Flavor Of Green Tea Over Rice

The Flavor Of Green Tea Over Rice (1952) directed by Yasujiro Ozu seems like an unusual film to me in that I have mostly seen the late Ozu pictures. Thus, perhaps, like Donald RIchie I have come ot expect a certain style in his films. This films has unusual stylistic shots from inside a cab at the beginning of the film and there are several times when Ozu uses a tracking shot or moves in for a close up that almost seems disruptive given how little the camera moves in his latter films. David Bordwell in Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema points out that Ozu would never again use such flagrant camera movements, but it is characteristic that they were subject to a rigorous semi-abstract organization. Ihave to admit to enjoying those falgarant camera movements-they are more interesting to me than the static camera of late Ozu. After seeing so many of Mikio Naruse's films, a contemporary of Ozu's, it may lie in the fact that over time both directors stopped experimenting as much and settled in with a style that was more static and focused more on the story and acting, rather than stylistic effects of the camera. I can't help but think of Naruse when thinking about the story of this film as well. The story is very similar to Naruse's 1951 triumph with Setsu Hara, Repast aka Meishi (rice!), which is also about a childless couple's marital struggles when the dull, ineffectual husband is finally valued at the end of the film. The couple is younger and poorer in Naruse's films. I found it hard to have sympathy for the Hara character, but it is even harder to have sympathy for Taeko (Michio Kogure) who is upper middle class with a maid to cook and clean and no children-spoiled from a privileged background. She looks down on the earthy, simple unpretentious, but successful business man Mokichi (Shin Saburi), who provides this lavish lifestyle for her which she takes completely for granted. Bordwell  focuses on a scene where Taeko is thinking in a train, which he attributes to William Wyler and John Ford's influence on Ozu. In the end, the wife sees the  folly of her ways and the future seesm bright even for the unmarried niece, Setsuko (Keiko Tsushima) who was wary of marriage after seeing Mokichi and Taeko's marriage up close.