Yasujiro Ozu

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swo17
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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#476 Post by swo17 » Thu Jul 09, 2015 1:25 pm

Michael Kerpan wrote:A Who's Who of the Tenement Block (proper translation of title)
I'm still determined for the title The Tenement Directory to catch on...

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zedz
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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#477 Post by zedz » Thu Jul 09, 2015 6:41 pm

swo17 wrote:
Michael Kerpan wrote:A Who's Who of the Tenement Block (proper translation of title)
I'm still determined for the title The Tenement Directory to catch on...
I believe MoC are planning to issue this next year as Who's Slummin' Now?.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#478 Post by FakeBonanza » Sun Jul 12, 2015 11:53 pm

zedz wrote:
swo17 wrote:
Michael Kerpan wrote:A Who's Who of the Tenement Block (proper translation of title)
I'm still determined for the title The Tenement Directory to catch on...
I believe MoC are planning to issue this next year as Who's Slummin' Now?.
The MOC will feature each of those titles on the cover, in both English and Japanese.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#479 Post by DeprongMori » Mon Jul 13, 2015 6:32 pm

I didn't see it noted elsewhere, but Record of a Tenement Gentleman is listed among the "New Arrivals" on Hulu's Criterion channel.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#480 Post by movielocke » Tue May 31, 2016 5:28 pm

I sort of think they should title it Record of a Tenement rather than completely retranslating the title.

I've been catching up on the silent Ozu I've not seen that is available on Hulu. I've seen The Lady and the Beard at the CineFamily so I skipped that one.
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Days of Youth is very nice--and very Harold Lloyd (minus the stunts)--lightly humorous but in a way that skewers the continuation of traditional Japan culture and how it makes western style "courtship" of a single woman all in vain. I feel like the commentary that nothing boys do matters because women are still subject to arranged marriages is rather well done. There's almost a Groundhog's Day element to the final shot, ending the film where it began, using a ruse to try to meet a nice girl one-on-one in a socially acceptable way of renting your apartment to her as the next tenant. The film is in dire need of a soundtrack, as I think the comic elements fall a little bit flat without any support.

A Straightforward Boy is a pretty good short, very funny, a score would be nice, but the humor is broader and plays stronger. It's just a short and very much feels like a Buster Keaton short--I could easily imagine Keaton as a low grade hood that kidnaps a boy and then so exasperated by the normal qualities of a rambunctious child, winds up returning the kid but he can't get away. It works about as well as any average Keaton short, which is pretty high praise.

I Graduated, But... is a fragment of a short film, but the bones of the film are there and I didn't feel like the title cards explaining the missing elements felt all that different from the dialog cards throughout these films. Unfotunately the surviving fragments leave you with an extremely basic story that is so spare that is seems more like a morality play than a dramatic piece.

Where Now are Dreams of Youth? is a fantastic film, on par with the best films of the Eclipse sets. It feels a bit uneven throughout but it all comes together for a socially scathing critique of traditional Japanese cultural norms that are literally beaten down by the one character who has the power/standing to challenge these norms. The ending is really outstanding and elevates the entire film and made me completely reevaluate the entire piece, it's struck me as a very political film, in a way, by the ending, as it challenges the entire white-collar system of employment and college pipeline feeding said. The unevenness is a feature of the film's function, I think, and before the ending, I think I was reading the film wrong.

Woman of Tokyo is a story that often reminded me of Tokyo Twilight in tone. it's only about forty minutes long, but packs a full feature's worth of fantastic acting and the story is complete and exactly as long as it needs to be. Then, abruptly, the film dissonantly appends a coda with two reporters as the final scene. I hated that, and it seemed to really detract from the overall experience of the film and the powerful impact of the final scene with the titular character was completely lost. This is the only Hulu-only film with a score. it's a jazz score and it's worse than the scores on the silent ozu comedies eclipse set.

A Mother Should be Loved is the only film I didn't really like, so far, of the hulu silents. the film is missing it's first and last reels, with title cards describing the plot of those missing scenes. So we are thrust into the story after tragedy has just occured, and we leave the story just before the tragic renunciation of family final scene is renounced and resolved. The loss of the introduction and finale seems to have left me somewhat disconnected from the film. But then, I think there are cultural aspects to the film I simply am not getting (or the film is disconnected itself). Early on, we discover the eldest son is an adopted son, which depresses him and leaves him feeling betrayed, but then he's chastised by a family friend and the family moves to the suburbs and the combination cures his depression, seemingly. a few years later, he's in college and asks his mother for money to help out a friend who got in debt to a prostitute, the mother gives him the money no questions asked. In the next room, the younger brother is despondent because mother refused to give him money for a class graduation trip. the elder brother gives the younger the money.

Then the film gets weird.

the mother is altering some out of style clothes for the younger brother while he is away and the elder brother--who has grown Emo-Hair, ala Tobey Maguire in Spider-man 3--viciously verbally attacks her claiming it is not fair she treats the younger son differently (she treats the eldest as privileged, in other words, how a mother would treat the eldest son, was my interpretation) and storms out to go live at the whorehouse, but he can't go through with it. The younger son returns and the two of them fight, verbally nasty and hateful, and the elder brother does go through with it this time and starts living at the whorehouse. The mother explains to the younger it's not the elder's fault because it will be better for the younger brother somehow in his college application if the older brother is not part of their family. The mother visits the brother at the whorehouse and he is fucking awful to her in every possible way, renounces the family and makes her flee weeping. At this point the film cuts out and the title cards explain the family reunites.

I really didn't get the dynamics driving any of the elder brother's character motivations in this film at all, and if someone could explain them I'd be very grateful.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#481 Post by movielocke » Wed Jun 01, 2016 3:51 pm

An Inn in Tokyo also has a score, a rather brilliant, fantastic score, on Hulu.

It's also a fucking masterpiece, instantly it might be my favorite of the thirty some Ozu films I've seen. It has all the charm and humor, deep family bonds and intensity of feeling that has always made Ozu one of my favorite directors. just stunning, an incredible, incredible film.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#482 Post by movielocke » Thu Jun 02, 2016 7:53 pm

Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family is a straight up remake of Make Way for Tomorrow
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(but the Ozu has a happy-ish ending), much more of a remake than my often misstated assertions that Tokyo Story is a remake or inspired by Make Way for Tomorrow. Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family feels distinctly different from all the silents I just watched, far more akin in both style, tempo and outlook to the domestic dramas from later in his career that he is known for. There is a bit of detachment from the film and the ambivalence towards 'family' and 'marriage' as an institution seems to be especially reflected in the final shot, which like 400 Blows ends with a male running away on the beach, running away from the institutions of society, looking back at the camera.
It's not as good as most Ozu films, thematically it feels unformed at times, often beholden to it's extremely close mimicry and aping in exact detail of the first two acts of Make Way for Tomorrow (house is lost, move in with the eldest son, major conflict with his wife, move in with the eldest daughter major conflict for interfering with the grandchildren) on the other hand, the way this film resolves itself, with a lecture from the youngest son, seems unmotivated and out-of-step with the direction of the rest of the film. On the other hand, perhaps this ending was a relic of wartime censorship, as a family could not be seen as behaving as they do without 'sanction' within the film. If so, it makes Tokyo Story all the more essential as a superior companion and reflection of this film, illustrating quite well just how severely a censoriously imposed attitude can completely flip a story with a single didactic and recalibrating scene.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#483 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Jun 02, 2016 8:12 pm

Tokyo Inn is one of my very favorite Ozu films (and silent films in general)/.

I Graduated But is not "fragments" but a sort of home video condensed version of the film. Unfortunately, the full film no longer exists (except for its script).

Not a fan of Toda Famiuly -- but the epilogue seems to undermine all the patriotic balderdash that has come before. The priggish younger son has no interest in doing _his_ duty to marry (and flees like a little boy afraid of getting cooties by contact with the proposed marital candidate, a lovely friend of his sister).

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#484 Post by Jack Phillips » Thu Jun 02, 2016 8:23 pm

No censorship is required to account for the climax of the film. The material itself demands such an adjustment. Japanese society is one in which the elderly are venerated and ancestors are worshiped. You can't dis the senior members of your family and then expect not to get called on it. What the young son does is shocking and in bad taste--to air his grievance publically, at a formal dinner--but that indicates the depth of his outrage. The film builds to this scene (albeit subtly). Without it the picture is incomplete, and a Japanese audience at the time (or even now) would have felt dissatisfied if it or something comparable were missing.

The beach escape at the end is just a bit of whimsy to lighten the previous heavy going. It doesn't really work.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#485 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Jun 02, 2016 9:45 pm

I think Ozu was doing a lot more than "lightening things up" with his epilogue. ;-)

But Toda Family is one of my least favorite Ozu films (and not a fan of Make Way for Tomorrow either).

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movielocke
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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#486 Post by movielocke » Thu Jun 09, 2016 4:05 pm

criterion doesn't have "Fighting Friends: Japanese Style", "I Flucked, But" or "kagami jishi" up on Hulu, presumably they have the rights though.

They could issue one more eclipse set, simply titled _Silent Ozu_ and get everything released on just four discs, by my calculations:

Disc 1 :
Days of Youth (103)
Fighting Friends (14)
I Graduated But (12)
A Straightforward Boy (8)
TRT:134

Disc 2:
I Flunked But (65)
The Lady and the Beard (75)
TRT: 140

Disc 3:
Where Now are Dreams of Youth? (92)
Woman of Tokyo (47)
TRT: 139

Disc 4:
A Mother Should be Loved (73)
An Inn in Tokyo (80)
Kagami jishi (24)
TRT: 177

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#487 Post by movielocke » Sun Jun 12, 2016 3:45 am

A Hen in the Wind is pretty magnificent. It has an echo of An Inn in Tokyo and/or Woman of Tokyo Criterion should just package all three together already because they're all worth the effort.

All the descriptions of the film I saw on hulu and imdb and elsewhere basically spoil the film and take a very odd tack of saying the film is about the husband. The film is almost equally divided between the wife and husband's story arc, but it's a little odd to see the entire first half of the film so readily dismissed in order to write a capsule line that focusing on the husband.
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The film opens on a woman, Tokiko, and her young son, they are awaiting the imminent return of her husband from the war back to their household. He is long delayed and her finances have stretched so far that she is selling some of her last possessions (a kimono) to be able to pay her rent. She accesses an intermediary, a friend who had to become a prostitute during the war, the friend fences the kimono to high ranking prostitute who will be able to access the black market and sell it for a good price, presumably. The high ranking prostitute tells her she is a fool to sell THINGS when she could sell her body and be much better off.

Naturally, tragedy will have to strike, and her son becomes ill with a sudden bout of colitis. The doctors save him, but the nurse demands pre-payment for two weeks stay in the hospital. Money she doesn't have. Money she probably can't raise or borrow. Money that can only be found be returning to the high ranking prostitute and selling her body for a night.

She does it. Her son's life is saved. Her life is shattered.

Two weeks later her husband returns.

At first joyful, she confesses her actions that night. He is deeply disturbed and the next day he angrily confronts her, rapes her and then leaves for the night, sitting outside.

In spite of this, he is something of a good man, to everyone that is not his wife. He has heartfelt conversations with a coworker and admits he has forgiven his wife and understand, and he decides to see this house of prostitution for himself. There he hears a bit more about how it is a profession of survival, taken on to provide for families when no other provisions could be found--particularly during the war, in a way the film is metaphorically about the entire war time experience of return. of mistrust and fear. of the truly dire privation civilians suffered in war time and in the inflationary post war time as well. And ultimately the story is about how women are unnable to communicate with men. and vice versa. As though language itself is the failure reflected in the culture that closes her mouth in shame and opens his mouth in rage. the story is so simple it is almost allegorical, but it is also so specific that it could never be so reduced, if you take such determinations as inherently deprecating.

Still unable to communicate with his wife, he returns home and she begs his forgiveness. He pushes her down the stairs and for the second time, the audience thinks he has killed her. She has merely broken her ankle though, and in a truly heartbreaking scene pulls herself back together and back up the stairs to her unresponsive husband. She says she is eager to be so abused if that is what he wants and he finally capitulates and says that everything is okay now for the future and the past is the past. It rings rather deliberately hollow for all that is something of a happy ending.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#488 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sun Jun 12, 2016 12:35 pm

Hen in the Wind is what I call one of Ozu's "angry" films, ones in which he displays strong political feelings. Here, the film is really about (IMHO) ordinary Japanese men's failure to care for Japan's actual women (and children), in their zeal for military glory on behalf of the "abstract" nation (and emperor). Men failed their _real_ responsibilities during the war, and then continued to do so right after the war. Once again male "ideals" ignore/devalue the reality -- the unavoidable sufferings and hardships women endured (and the contrivances they made to survive).

I also classify Record of a Tenement (NOT "tenement gentleman") as "angry" -- despite its comic tone -- because I think it reflects Ozu's real distress and even anger over Japan's manifest (well-documented) neglect and mistreatment of "war orphans". Other "angry" films include Early Spring and, most of all, Tokyo Twilight. By and large, contemporaneous audiences (and critics) rejected movies in which Ozu criticized Japanese behavior (except when such films had a very high level of humor).

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#489 Post by zedz » Sun Jun 12, 2016 4:55 pm

Last week I visited Ozu's grave in Kamakura and I'm pleased to report that he's being very well looked after, festooned with bottles of water and sake (and half a bottle of Suntory Whiskey - at least I hope it was whiskey). We had been repeatedly besieged by local schoolchildren who had apparently been tasked with stalking gaijin to improve their English (they were at every temple, not just Engakuji), so I regifted one of the paper cranes I'd been given.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#490 Post by Michael Kerpan » Sun Jun 12, 2016 7:35 pm

Did it still have a cigarette (like it did in mid-April)?

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid ... =3&theater" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

We weren't besieged by schoolchildren at all, except for my friend's grandchildren (just a few mostly shy "hellos" in passing, and the like). I feel jealous.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#491 Post by movielocke » Wed Jun 15, 2016 8:55 pm

Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice more or less completes Ozu for me, I've not seen the unavailable Munekata Sisters nor I Flunked but nor the short doc kagamijishi but now I've seen all the available films.

And it is a goddamn shame that this film has never been released by criterion, it's a superb piece of work, gently funny, but also Ozu's most blatently gay film (you can cut the sexual tension with a knife between Mokichi and the kid he becomes a gurantor for. Additionally, Setsuko and the women in the film all seem coded as well. Ozu gets around the censors by ultimately having the various characters looking for non-arranged marriage and the film works quite well as a simple critique of the pains and problems of arranged marriage and naturally of a critique of the society that perpetuates this institution, but to me the film felt painfully gay throughout, and if you take it as having a gay context "smuggled" in, the film becomes all the more layered and heartbreaking because it suggests that although arranged marriage may be overcome by society, being closeted cannot.

A very impressive and memorable film. it is amazing how incredibly well balanced the film is between thethree primary characters, and how well each character reflects different levels of queerness and how each character has different points of conflict with cultural norms and each character has equal internal struggle because of the fact that none of them quite properly fit in a society they never feel like they belong in.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#492 Post by longstone » Wed Sep 07, 2016 6:52 am

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201609070060.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
not sure if this is old news but looks interesting
the opening paragraph states ....
"A nearly complete short version of a prewar movie shot by acclaimed director Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963) has been discovered, a rare treasure from the Japanese silent film era.

The film, a comedy titled “Tokkan Kozo” (A Straightforward Boy), is a short version of the 38-minute original that was released in 1929. The whereabouts of the theatrical version remains unknown.

Another 14-minute film of the shorter version was discovered by film critic Sadao Yamane in 1988, but the opening scene and other clips were missing."

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#493 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed Sep 07, 2016 10:52 pm

Curiously enough, nothing I've seen actually mentions how much extra footage (outside credits, etc) this contains. I'm assuming only another couple of minutes. But time will tell, I suppose.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#494 Post by Minkin » Fri Nov 11, 2016 8:28 pm

On the forthcoming list, I had the following title under "played somewhere with a Janus logo":

OZU, Yasujiro – The Girl Next Door - 1934 - Japan

Does this film actually exist? Google turns up nothing, other than Shimazu's Our Neighbor, Miss Yae. Might this be a very under-utilized alternative title (I'm thinking of Carnies' Twilight) - if so, then which film might it actually be? Passing Fancy looks like the best possibility.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#495 Post by Michael Kerpan » Mon Nov 14, 2016 8:34 pm

Well, Our Neighbor, Yae-chan was also made by a Yasujiro (just not the Ozu one). ;-) (Very nice film -- as are most of the other films I've managed to see that were made by the other Yasujiro).

No Ozu film I know of has a title anything like this (in any language).

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#496 Post by TMDaines » Fri Feb 24, 2017 12:31 pm

What Ozu films would I be recommended to watch before spoiling them with Wenders' Tokyo-Ga?

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#497 Post by swo17 » Fri Feb 24, 2017 12:37 pm

I remember it showing a lot from Tokyo Story, maybe not much else.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#498 Post by Mr Sausage » Fri Feb 24, 2017 2:30 pm

I inadvertently saw Tokyo-ga before ever seeing an Ozu film and it didn't spoil anything for me, so I say go ahead and see it whenever.

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#499 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Feb 24, 2017 6:31 pm

The only problem with Tokyo Ga before actually _seeing_ Ozu is that it sells the misty, transcendental Ozu myth (did anyone actually take such view seriously before Schrader began promoting it)?

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Re: Yasujiro Ozu

#500 Post by Michael Kerpan » Tue Jun 27, 2017 9:59 am

Filmstruck now has Tokyo Inn (Tokyo no Yado), my favorite Ozu "silent" (though this does have a synchronized score). Not restored -- probably pretty much the same source as the Shochiku DVD -- but subtitled. (Was this on Hulu -- or did this first appear on FS?) If you have not seen this yet (and like Ozu at all), this is highly recommended (despite some almost-lost-to-decomposition sections).

While the dialog isn't actually audible in this -- it feels like a talkie (and one really can hear the characters talking --in one's mind). The performances are tremendous. Probably Sakamoto's best (as the homeless father) -- and ditto for Choko Iida (as his re-found restaurant-owner acquaintance) and Tomio Aoki (as his elder son). Yoshiko Okada is wonderful (as a homeless mother) in what I think may have been her last film appearance before her disastrous "escape" to Russia,

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