When I look back on the Spring and Summer of 2020 I will remember it as a time of stress and uncertainty, but one constant has made the time of the Coronavirus lockdown rather wonderful. From April to July I have delved into 25 films by the magnificent Japanese film director, Yasujirō Ozu, thanks to the BFI Player.
Up until then I had only seen one of his films, LATE SPRING from 1949, and remembered it's unhurried story-telling which, nevertheless left a lingering and sad feeling. Having now watched so many of his films over a relatively short period, I now know that his best films have the same themes of empathy and the lingering sadness that lies under family lives.
His signature style of meticulous framing of his scenes, his particular low-level cinematography - as if the viewer is sitting with his characters on tatami mats - and the frequent use of his actors talking direct to the camera in scenes where they are in conversation, soon becomes second nature to the viewer. Also a constant in his films are the 'pillow' shots which punctuate changes of scene - trains, buildings, smoking chimneys, establishing shots of restaurant or bar signs - even washing lines festooned with laundy appear again and again.
Ozu made 54 films - both silent and sound - from 1927 to 1962. Of these, 17 silent films are now considered lost while two exist only in 10 minute fragments. His early films all reflect his love of American cinema with a healthy mix of gangster films, college student comedies and melodramas. He made his first sound film in 1936 and very soon found the subject he would work and re-work again: the intimate family dramas of parents and children and the ripples that reach out from their actions to friends and work colleagues.
I was reminded while watching Ozu's family dramas about how Jane Austen famously likened her style of writing as working "the
little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush"; Ozu's powerful delicacy is exactly like this. Indeed he shares in most of his films with Austen the same subject of parents having to find husbands for their daughters. Family ran deep with Ozu: he lived most of his adult life with his mother and when he died two years after her on his 60th birthday, they were buried together.
Ozu - seen above with the Sutherland Award awarded for TOKYO STORY - of course, used his films to reflect the changing Japanese world. The films after 1945 are scattered with the lingering presences of dead sons lost to WWII and the effects it had on his main characters and then the growing middle-classes with his characters mostly working in anonymous-looking office blocks - and most particularly in TOKYO STORY, the changing times as older parents look on bewildered as their children's lives are consumed with work.
What you definitely grow to love watching his films is the Ozu repertory company: a small collection of actors who he used again and again, bringing with them memories of previous roles. Shining out from these fine actors are the marvellous Chishū Ryū and Setsuko Hara.
Appearing in 52 of Ozu's 54 films, Ryū started appearing in the silent films as play-as-cast roles like college students and policemen. he progressed and in Ozu's first sound film THE ONLY SON, he played an important supporting role as the titular son's teacher. Six years later he played the lead in THERE WAS A FATHER and Ozu then cast him as all ages and in supporting and lead roles. He never gave a bad performance and as the fathers in LATE SPRING, TOKYO STORY and AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON he delivers genuine heartbreaking performances. Ryū was working up until 1992, he died the following year aged 88.
Hara was already a famous actress when she first worked with Ozu in LATE SPRING and she went on to appear in five more of his films. In her first three films with Ozu, she plays a character named 'Noriko' and she is luminous in all three: LATE SPRING as the daughter who wants to remain with her father and not get married, in EARLY SUMMER as a daughter who wants to marry on her terms and in TOKYO STORY as a widowed daughter-in-law. She showed her range too in LATE AUTUMN as a widowed mother while in TOKYO TWILIGHT she is an unhappily married woman who moves back in with her father. Hara retired from acting in 1963, the year of Ozu's death from cancer, and died in 2015, aged 95.
My Top 10 Ozu films - remembering I have yet to see several from his best years - are:
10) Ochazuke no aji (Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice, 1952): While trying to find a suitable husband for a niece, the marriage of Taeko and Mokichi starts to fracture (Ryū plays an old army colleague of Mokichi's who now runs an amusement arcade)
9) Higanbana (Equinox Flower, 1958): Hirayama prides himself on his liberal views but when he finds out his daughter is in love with a man she has chosen to marry, he refuses (Ryū plays a friend of Hirayama who also has an independantly-minded daughter)
8) Chichi ariki (There Was A Father, 1942): Shuhei is a teacher, raising his young son alone. Resigning from his job after a tragic accident, he leaves his son in a boarding school and finds office work in Tokyo. When his son Ryohei grows up, they struggle to connect (Ryū plays Shuhei)
7) Bakushû (Early Summer, 1951): Noriko lives with her extended family; when an elderly uncle visits and asks why she is not married yet, it sets off a hunt for a suitable husband but Noriko makes up her own mind (Hara plays Noriko, Ryū plays Koichi, her older brother)
6) Tôkyô boshoku (Tokyo Twilight, 1957): Shukichi lives with his daughters Tatako (the older) and her baby, estranged from her husband, and Akiko (the youngest). They discover their long-absent mother is working nearby; this and Akiko's own secret lead to tragedy (Hara plays Tatako, Ryū plays Shukichi)
5) Hitori musuko (The Only Son, 1936): Widow Tsune works hard in a factory to provide for her son Ryosuke's education. His teacher Okubo leaves for Japan and says that Ryosuke should go to college, which Tsune works harder to pay for. Ryosuke moves to Japan and a few years after, Tsune visits him, shattering her illusions (Ryū plays Okubo, who is reduced to running a cutlet eaterie)
4) Akibiyori (Late Autumn, 1960): Three friends meet to honour the 7th anniversary of a friend's death with his widow Akiko and daughter Ayako. They decide behind the women's backs that they should both be married but Ayako wants to stay with her mother but others keep conspiring (Hara plays Akiko, Ryū plays her brother-in-law Shukichi)
3) Sanma no aji (An Autumn Afternoon, 1962): Widower Shuhei lives with his two younger children, and regularly meets with old college friends. They invite their teacher to a dinner and, after getting drunk, Shuhei takes him home and finds he now runs a noodle shop with his bitter, unmarried daughter. Shuhei decides that his daughter must be married... (This was Ozu's final film and Ryū plays Shuhei)
2) Banshun (Late Spring, 1949): Professor Somiya lives with his 27 year-old daughter Noriko, both perfectly happy, until his sister suggests that it is time for Noriko to be married. Noriko says she doesn't want a husband as it will leave her father alone but her aunt says she has a widow in mind for him. Noriko, confused by her jealous feelings, nevertheless has one last holiday with her father when they finally can say what the other doesn't want to hear (playing beautifully together, Hara plays Noriko, Ryū plays Somiya)
1) Tokyo Monogatari (Tokyo Story, 1953): Retired couple Shukichi and Tomi are looking forward to their trip to Tokyo where they will visit their two married oldest children and their widowed daughter-in-law Noriko. Once there, they find they are viewed as a hinderence by the children with only Noriko happy to spend time with them. Shukichi and Tomi decide to return home early and make the journey. Soon the whole family make that journey too... (Hara is luminous as Noriko, Ryū is wonderful as Shukichi as is Chieko Higashiyama as Tomi)
Arigato Yasujio-san, arigato.
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