Yasujiro Ozu

PLOT: An errant salaryman’s son gets lost until a man from the Tokyo tenements brings him to vendor Tane, who’s reluctant to let the kid board.Read More »

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Noriko, 28, is a secretary in a small company in Tokyo. She is a modern young woman but she still lives with her parents, just like her brother, his wife and their two children. She is under great pressure from her family; in fact, it is not reasonable at this age not to have yet married. But the young girl rejoices in her independence. Her boss offers her a good deal of his knowledge but Noriko hesitates until a sort of illumination solves the problem for her, at least…Read More »

PLOT: A kabuki actor’s mistress hatches a jealous plot to bring down her lover’s son.Read More »

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One of the earliest surviving silent comedies by master filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu, A Straightforward Boy is a rambunctious, adorable kidnapping caper now screening in a new restoration that restores to it eight long-lost and recently rediscovered minutes. The short features one of the all-time great child actors, Tomio Aoki, at age six and in his first starring role as the titular boy all too happy to be abducted – so long as his petty-crook captors (Tatsuo Saitô and Takeshi Sakamoto) are willing to endure his company. Aoki’s extraordinary career would go on to include over 300 films, from Ozu’s 1932 I Was Born, But… to Seijun Suzuki’s 2001 Pistol Opera.Read More »

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Shukichi is a professor, a widower, absorbed in his work. His unmarried daughter, Noriko, runs his household for him. Both are perfectly content with this arrangement until the old man’s sister declares that her niece should get married. Noriko is, after all, in her mid-20s; in Japan in 1949, a single woman that old is approaching the end of her shelf life. His sister warns the professor that after his death Noriko will be left alone in the world; it is his duty to push her out of the nest and find a husband who can support her. The professor reluctantly agrees. When his daughter opposes any idea of marriage, he tells her he is also going to remarry. That is a lie, but he will sacrifice his own comfort for his daughter’s future. She marries.Read More »

東京物語

They one hot beautiful summer day joyfully left home
She one hot sad day stumbled sideways
He strangely found himself back home
one of those so beautiful noisy hot summer days one saysRead More »

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“Sooner or later, everyone who loves movies comes to Ozu. He is the quietest and gentlest of directors, the most humanistic, the most serene.” — Roger Ebert

It took long enough, but I sampled my first Yasujiro Ozu film, Good Morning (Ohayo), and will soon indulge myself with as many of his works as I can locate. At one time, his films were thought to be “too Japanese” and weren’t available in the West, but if Good Morning is any indication of his craft and appeal, Ozu deserves a much wider audience. It’s a film that works at multiple levels, and only artistic geniuses like Shakespeare have been able to pull off such a universal work that works with both down to earth people and with the upper levels of critical audiences equally.Read More »

A man returns from World War II to find his desperate wife had resorted to one night of prostitution to pay for their son’s hospital bills.Read More »

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Yasujiro Ozu’s frequent leading man Chishu Ryu is riveting as Shuhei, a widowed high school teacher who finds that the more he tries to do what is best for his son’s future, the more they are separated. Though primarily a delicately wrought story of parental love, There Was a Father offers themes of sacrifice that were deemed appropriately patriotic by Japanese censors at the time of its release during World War II, making it a uniquely political film in Ozu’s body of work.Read More »