DVD/150: HAHA WO KOWAZUYA (aka A MOTHER SHOULD BE LOVED) (Yasujiro Ozu, 1934)

Ozu made 54 films but 17 are considered lost including his first 7 films.  Two other films barely survive while HAHA WO KOWAZUYA is missing it's first and last reels; it is still watchable but it's fairly standard melodrama.

Ozu returns to the theme of the breakdown of a family but it is fairly thin although well performed by the three lead actors.

Sadao and Kosaku's happy life shatters when their father's sudden death leaves them and their mother Chieko alone.  A few years later, Sadao discovers he is not Chieko's son but the child of his father's first marriage, he is angry at Chieko for not being told but his uncle pursuades him to forgive his mother.

A few years later, the secret flares up again when both brothers accuse Chieko of favouring the other.  Eventually Chieko reveals to Kosaku why his brother dislikes her.  Can the family survive?

Shelf or charity shop?  A keeper as it is paired with the superior LATE AUTUMN.  In later years Ozu-san said the film was only really memorable for him because his own father had died during the filming.  But despite the fairly basic melodramatic plot Ozu still builds an intensity in the scenes of family conflict and the tonal shift between the ever-reducing family homes and the shadowy local bordello with it's shuttered windows, striped awning and western film posters - boy, did I jump when Joan Crawford in RAIN appears suddenly!  Mitsuko Yoshikawa has the thankless role of the long-suffering mother, much given to collapsing to her knees. It appears to be a family trait as the brothers also crumple easily but I liked the surliness of Den Obinata as Sadao.  Ozu's favourite actor Chishu Ryu pops up as Sadao's dissolute student friend while there are nice performances from Yumeko Aizome as an icy prostitute and frequent Ozu performer Choko Iida as the bordello maid.

 

DVD/150: HITORI MUSUKO (The Only Son) (Yasujiro Ózu, 1936)

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.