Five years after Japanese cinema embraced sound films, Yasujiro Ózu finally made his first talkie, the moving HITORI MUSUKO aka THE ONLY SON.
Mothers sacrificing for their children was a popular film subject but Ózu's version has no resolution, just an open-ended sadness.
Ózu insisted on filming at the abandoned Kamata studio, closed because it was impossible to film talkies there because of an adjacent train line - so Ózu could only film between midnight and 5am when the trains stopped running!
In 1923, in rural Shinshu, widowed factory machinist Tsune tells her young son Ryosuke that, despite her low wages, she will find the money for his secondary school education, and even college.
Thirteen years later, Tsune finally visits Ryosuke in Tokyo but is quietly shocked that he lives in a ramshackle suburb, is on low wages as a night-school teacher - and is married with a baby son.
Shelf or charity shop? A resounding shelf. I wonder if Joan Crawford knew she appeared in Ózu's first sound film? Probably not but there she is, in full film magazine glamour, pinned to the wall in Ryosuke's humble home. Films feature again when Ryosuke takes his mother to see the German film musical UNFINISHED SYMPHONY only for her to fall asleep during it. It is a 'funny' moment but it is more touching than anything else. Ózu's deliberate, hypnotic pace lulls you past the plot points until you arrive at two scenes where mother and son reveal their pain - Ryosuke apologizing for any disappointment his life has given her and later Tsune's revelation that supporting him has left her homeless and living in the factory - and you realize how much you have grown to care about them. There are no villains, just the acceptance of fate not being kind. Choko Iida delivers a wonderfully nuanced performance as Tsune, Shin'ichi Himori is fine as Ryosuke and, again, Ózu finds a great role for his stalwart actor Chishu Ryu; here he plays the teacher, about to move to Tokyo, who pursuades Tsune that her son is bright enough to invest in his further education. The irony being that Tsune and Ryosuke visit him and she discovers he is cooking in a cutlet cafe in an industrial area of the city. The final scene of Tsune, snatching a few minutes rest from being a factory skivvy, is heartbreaking.
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