Watch Ozu with Me (plus the films of his muse, Setsuko Hara)

Can anyone make a list of their favorite Ozu/Setsuko movies together? Chances are I have seen it, but sometimes I get confused, since many of his movies look alike.. This way, me (or anyone else) can have the cream rise to the top after a process of elimination of the previously viewed.

An Introduction to Marriage (Ozu, 1930) -- lost film



Ozu's first film of 1930 was a marriage comedy about a couple who start to get on each other's nerves.

For the first time, Ozu worked with a star actress, Sumiko Kurishima. She was the top actress for Shochiku studio at that time.

Ozu's thoughts:


I tracked down another still from An Introduction to Marriage. Here it is below.

I particularly liked Tokyo Story, Late Spring, I Was Born, But..., and Ohayō. I have Tokyo Story in my top 10 favorite movies. But it has been about 6 years since I watched an Ozu movie (except that 10-minute fragment). I have not been watching a lot of movies lately, I was more of a film buff back in 2011-2013, I became more of a manga buff since 2015.

I don't know much about his earlier movies but my general impression is that Ozu's movies are slice of life movies, perhaps the "gold standard" in Japanese slice of life.

Of course, Japanese slice of life is usually not very realistic in the sense that it does not portray daily life accurately (the more recent super stylized slice of life mangas for drastic example) but they are realistic in the sense that they convey the "emotions" of daily life effectively.

Cool. I love history.

Matt, the six films they made together are:

Late Spring (1949)
Early Summer (1951)
Tokyo Story (1953)
Tokyo Twilight (1957)
Late Autumn (1960)
The End of Summer (1961)

Late Spring is my favorite, as well as Tokyo Story. Other people can comment more, but I haven't seen them all.

I don't really like the English title of the last one. I think they try to force the seasonal title to keep it similar to the others.

I think I've seen them all, but even the titles are too similar! I think "The End of Summer" might be the only one I didn't see.. I can't remember Setsuko being forced to marry anyone - she was always single and looking out for others instead.

Movie of the Week #2:

Walk Cheerfully (Ozu, 1930)



Starring: Minoru Takada, Hiroko Kawasaki, Hisao Yositani, Satoko Date
Written by: Hiroshi Shimizu, Tadao Ikeda
Cinematography by: Hideo Shigehara

Silent, Black and White, 1 hour 35 minutes. Romantic Crime Drama, Comedy

Review:

Kenji Koyama, a.k.a. Ken the Knife, leads a small time gang of crooks in this highly stylized, romantic and unabashedly sentimental gangster film. The story crafted by Mr. Shimizu, a fellow director and Ozu friend, plays out as the very definition of a morality tale: the title was inspired by Quaker founder George Fox's famous quote: "Walk Cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone, that your carriage and your life may preach among all sorts of peoples, and to them ... whereby in them you may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you."

In other words, Ken has a crisis of conscience. He's a feared boxer and small-time street thug, but he falls in love with a kind and beautiful "good" girl named Yasue. They develop a romance, and his gangster girlfriend gets jealous, but when Yasue finds out about Ken's life of crime, she refuses to see him again until he reforms and leads a straight life.

It's a standard story, but personally I liked this film.


There will undoubtedly be some critics out there who call it mindless, sentimental rubbish, or not essential Ozu. It does drag in spots. But it's also a facsimile film made by a 26 year old who (at that time) was infatuated with Western culture and still searching for his voice.

The movie begins with a backwards dolly shot that reveals a row of cars and then a crowd chasing a man in the other direction. What Ozu gets right in Walk Cheerfully is style -- notwithstanding some indulgent comedy, this is a fleetly told story with lots of camera movement that manages to keep up with its hoodlums-on-the-go.


(Hiroko Kawasaki, Nobuku Matsuzono, and Minoru Takada in Walk Cheerfully)




The acting ranged from serviceable to pretty good. Minoru Takada presents a likeable, believable Kenji the Knife, except the parts where he's asked to show greater range, and then you can see him struggle. Hiroko Kawasaki makes a fine Yasue, the good girl he falls in love with.


(Hiroko Kawasaki in Walk Cheerfully, 1930)




More often than not, Ken's friend Senko, played by Hisao Yositani, steals the show. You can even call this a tearjerker buddy comedy at times.


(Minoru Takada and Hisao Yositani in Walk Cheerfully)




Altogether, Walk Cheerfully was a thoroughly likeable, enjoyable, kindhearted film. Not great Ozu, not mature Ozu, but young and stylish Ozu in his early genre blending approach.

Better than Days of Youth. I would rate it: +

I'm not sure what happened with the LHD / RHD. Good catch I never even noticed it before

I thought those eclectic segments really slowed down the pacing and they just seemed overly indulgent. But yeah, mostly I liked this movie. It was kind, sweet, and the ending is all Ozu. Teapots and clotheslines, what more can you want?

I haven't seen a full Ozu movie all the way through but I should and Tokyo Story I think will be my first choice.

How come Ozu's style, of having the actors look directly into the camera while speaking to each other, hasn't caught on near as much with other filmmakers of today?

Hi ironpony, I hope you enjoy Tokyo Story! It's one of the great films ever made!

I think Ozu's camera style is more influential than people sometimes realize. There must be many different examples, but one I can think of immediately is Wes Anderson. Here's an essay some student posted on Youtube that I watched not too long ago and I really enjoyed.

Spot the American movie poster in each Ozu film:




For Walk Cheerfully, that would be Clara Bow in Paramount's top 1927 rom-com, Rough House Rosie.





The mise-en-scene with Kenji's moll seated in front of the poster of his ideal girl was beautiful.

Okay thanks. I noticed Wes Anderson used that style but uses it incredible differently, and uses it for over the top comedic and campy movies, which is fine of course... But you never see anyone use it for straight forward dramas like Ozu did, at least I never have.

Ozu is different but it's one of the first things that attracted me to his films!

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Schedule for Week #3:

Movie of the Week: That Night's Wife (Ozu, 1930)

Also:
I Flunked, But ... (1930)

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That Night's Wife is a more intense, suspenseful, proto-noir crime thriller.

Looking forward to it!

Not sure if either of those with English subs will be readily available but will take a look around during the week. Shame I don't sprechen Italiano

I Flunked, But ... (Ozu, 1930)



Starring: Tatsuo Saitô, Kinuyo Tanaka, Tomio Aoki
Written by: Akira Fushimi
Cinematography by: Hideo Shigehara

Silent, Black and White, 1 hour 5 minutes. Student Comedy

Review:

As he did in Ozu's earliest surviving film, Student Romance: Days of Youth, Tatsuo Saitô returns and once again plays a university student struggling through final exams. He and his classmates think up ingenuous ways to cheat, one example being the way they write answer cribs on the back of their shirts. Unfortunately for Saitô, the cleaning lady takes his shirt to the laundry, so he fails his test.

Student comedies were enormously popular in Japan in the 1920s-1930s, and Ozu made several of them. I Flunked, But ... was a follow-up of sorts to I Graduated, But ... released the previous year. It was filmed in just a week, and I think the lack of quality shows. The picture was mostly devoid of humor, and felt more like a sitcom than a feature film.

I'm sure this will be the only time I call Ozu's direction lazy.


(Kinuyo Tanaka in I Flunked, But ...)




If there was a bright spot to watching this, it was the opportunity to see Kinuyo Tanaka play Saitô's love interest. Miss Tanaka starred in a few Ozu movies around this time, but she's much more famous and well-known for being Mizoguchi's muse later in her career. She went on to have award winning performances in masterpieces such as Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff, and The Life of Oharu.

She even became the first female movie director in Japan.


Final Grade:

Something to watch for completists, but otherwise not that funny and even pretty weird towards the end.

Had some emergencies and urgent things come up, sorry for disappearing. I will be back soon, promise.

That Night's Wife (1930) review coming in next few days.

Movie of the Week #3:

That Night's Wife (Ozu, 1930)



Starring: Tokihiko Okada, Emiko Yagumo, Tôgô Yamamoto
Written by: Kôgo Noda
Cinematography by: Hideo Shigehara

Silent, Black and White, 1 hour 5 minutes. Crime, Drama

Review:

A common man commits a desperate robbery in order to pay the medical bills for his sick daughter, who may not survive the night.

Yasujirō Ozu's 16th film, and the last one that survives from 1930, takes place entirely within a single twelve hour overnight period. Shuji, a devoted husband and father, has no money and possibly no job during the Great Depression in Japan. His daughter has just been diagnosed in critical condition. His wife looks on helplessly, tears in her eyes. What will this family do? How will they pay their bills?

That's the setup for That Night's Wife, a title which could either describe Shuji's role in caring for his daughter (after he completes the heist), or his wife Mayumi, who takes matters into her own hands when the cops close in.




German expressionist influences loom large, beginning with the opening scenes. Streetlights and buildings tower over men, creating a world in which people must feel hopeless against society.

Darkness and shadow further establish the mood and setting. There's never a doubt this will be a more serious crime drama than the one Ozu shot before.








And yet, That Night's Wife is not as gritty as the first scenes would imply. There is some violence, yes, but nobody gets shot. There is a robbery, but tellingly, Shuji flees with only a petty amount of cash. He leaves the rest behind. Finally, there's a chase to finish off the first act, where a small army of police pursue their robber through ominous and foreboding streets. Some of these shots reminded me of Janusz Kamiński's work in Schindler's List, where faceless German soldiers marched through the cold, dark night. Beautiful (and yet sinister) black and white cinematography.


(Tokihiko Okada, Mitsuko Ichimura, and Emiko Yagumo in a movie poster for That Night's Wife)




The rest of the film bears resemblance to more familiar Ozu territory: it was the first time he wanted to film an entire picture in a single room. Shuji returns home with the money; and his wife confronts him over where he found it. They take time to care for their daughter, hoping she will make it through the night.

Before long, Detective Kagawa shows up looking for his man. I won't spoil the rest of the movie, but suffice to say, a compassionate standoff ensues.

The acting ranged from serviceable to pretty good. The star of the film was definitely Emiko Yagumo, who played the mother/wife. I've never heard of this woman before, but her performance deserved praise. Tôgô Yamamoto was perfect as the gruff genre detective with a sensitive side. More mixed was the acting of Tokihiko Okada in the lead role -- sometimes weak, sometimes strong. The only character I really had a problem with was the small child, and that was probably Ozu's fault himself. She just seemed too lively at times to be on her deathbed, sapping away some tension.


Final Grade:

Expertly shot and composed, with a compelling narrative, That Night's Wife was an O.K. (if short) silent movie until the last ten minutes or so. Why?

Ozu's thoughts:

The problem with this film was that Ozu had trouble filling out the story, and it shows in the last scenes. Barely an hour long, the ending nevertheless drags and drags (it's repeated three different times). And the denouement devolved into moralizing once again.

Probably the consensus is that this was Ozu's best film to date, but I preferred Walk Cheerfully more.

Oh, looks like I forgot to give That Night's Wife a rating...

The Revengeful Spirit of Eros (Ozu, 1930) -- lost film



After completing Walk Cheerfully and That Night's Wife, along with I Flunked, But ... all of which were successful films, Shochiku rewarded Ozu with a summer vacation at a ritzy spa, so he could recuperate from physical stress, lack of sleep, etc. Around that time, the magazine Eiga Hyoron published the first special edition on Ozu's career for its July 1930 issue, proclaiming him the best new director in Japan.

To capitalize on the publicity, Ozu's boss demanded that he not return from his vacation without another finished film. Thus, The Revengeful Spirit of Eros was born. It was a short, ad-hoc nonsense comedy featuring Ozu regular Tatsuo Saitô and actress Satoko Date, who had played the gangster girlfriend in Walk Cheerfully. The plot involved Saitô and Date throwing themselves into the ocean, committing a lover's suicide pact, except both live and wash ashore separately. Each carries on a new life and pretends to haunt the other-- Date worked at a dance hall and had two new boyfriends.

Ozu's thoughts:

Now lost, The Revengeful Spirit of Eros was considered Ozu's slightest and also his sexiest film. It ran afoul of the censors and was heavily edited. Ozu and Date were rumored to be dating at the time.