Yasujiro Ozu

What so you make of Yasujiro Ozu's films and what have you seen?

I just watched An Autumn Afternoon (1962) and found it to be a film that was mundane, although insightful and relevant in content - not something I would normally be drawn to, however in style it really stood out.

I believe, An Autumn Afternoon is the only film of his I've seen, but am interested in seeing more. The film had a very calming effect with characters speaking largely in proper and level tones and pitches without a lot of emotional exuberance or grandstanding or long winded speeches. It was a very pleasant and relaxing film experience.

Also much has been said about Ozu breaking the 180 degree rule and also keeping his camera at a knee or waist level, but a couple things I also picked up on that I didn't read about is how static his camera is. I don't think the camera itself moved once in the entire film, but rather people and objects moved within the frame. It also looked like he used a lot of deep focus shots so that everything in the background and most of the foreground was in focus. In addition to this point there was a lot of straight line back depth and layers. The image is flat, but within it you might have four of five layers of lateral depths going on at once. Also the frame for many of the indoor scenes seemed to be bordered by vertical objects such as a door frame or a cabinet or large object in the foreground. In this way the framing reminded me a lot of a Chinese director, Wong Kar Wai (In the Mood for Love) although his camera constantly moves and tracks.

While I've seen hundreds and hundreds of French films and nearly as many Italian films, Japanese films with the exception of Kurosawa, are a weak spot in viewership for me. One of my favorite non Kurosawa films is Ugetsu and I also liked Branded to Kill and a few other Suzuki films, but on the whole Japanese cinema is a weak spot.

What do you make of Ozu's films and what do you recommend? There's quite a few on Criterion Channel right now.

__________________
"A candy colored clown!"
Member since Fall 2002
Top 100 Films, clicky below

http://www.movieforums.com/community...ad.php?t=26201

I've seen all of his films since Late Spring, except for one or two. They're all of a very high quality. Not one false note. And even many of the films he made before Late Spring are highly regarded.

An Autumn Afternoon was my first watch of his as well. After that, I mostly started watching his other color films (his last six films are all in color). Mainly because I immediately thought he used colors beautifully. But his black and white films are most certainly on the same level. I had the luck of being able to see some of them on the big screen. Basically: you can't go wrong with Ozu.

Some of my personal favorites:

An Autumn Afternoon
Floating Weeds
Good Morning
Tokyo Twilight
Early Spring
Tokyo Story
Late Spring

But as I said: all of his films are worth watching!

__________________
Cobpyth's Movie Log ~ 2019

Why do you people watch his last film as your first? LOL.

My first was the boring choice of Tokyo Story - I had thought it was everybody's first up to now.

I've seen 31 Ozu films to date and Tokyo Twilight is my favorite black'n'white Ozu, whereas Floating Weeds is my favorite color Ozu.

That's a very good summary of his late style, @iluv2viddyfilms. I'd say his silent movies are a must-see, too. Different from his late stuff but quite fascinating as well. I Was Born, But... is probably the no-brainer you should start from (though I owe Ozu a rewatch of this movie). But Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?, Woman of Tokyo, Passing Fancy, Tokyo Chorus etc. are all worthwhile, too.

__________________
Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

I think Ozu is a filmmaker's filmmaker. Basically Jim Jarmusch has spent his career paying homage to Ozu and his framing, dialogue and techniques. Many directors adore Ozu's work because it's so heartfelt and real.

But aside from a film like 'Good Morning', Ozu's work isn't something I'd recommend to the filmgoer on the street. It's too literal.

I only saw one of his movies: Late Spring. I liked it for its direction and realism, but it didn't really stand out as it felt too close to home, as if anyone could write that story if they just talked about how they met their husband. Basically, it was accurate, but not "inventive" enough for me. Since I saw it years ago, the most experience with any "Ozu" is the old dude from Kappy Mikey.

Love Ozu movies.

__________________
I’m here only on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays. That’s why I’m here now.

It popped up as an option on The Criterion Channel and I think it also might be leaving next month. I will likely watch Tokyo Story next.

I really do like his style, which is completely different from today's film grip having seizures camera movements and all over the place shots with little shot composition or structure to the framing or mise en scene blocking. It's one of the reasons I can't stand Chris Nolan's style who seems to be an opposite of filmmaker as Ozu.

Someone here mentioned Jim Jarmusch, which I completely get. I really love how Jarmusch framed his shots in Dead Man.

I think this is late Ozu's greatest strength, how he shows the every day so familiar to all of us, but does so through the means of formal mastery. Some filmmakers take us to alien lands, metaphysical headspaces, weaving improbable plots. They do it by using formal trickery, elaborate camera movements, and dopamine-rush editing. But here's an artist who speaks of the things we all know simply and elegantly. I think Ozu's mastery is exactly in that familiarity. The most universal is the most personal. Ozu wrote in his journal that he never made up a character. All of them are copies of his friends. Ozu observed life and reported back. Perhaps the greatest praise of Ozu comes from Mizoguchi. Mizoguchi said that what Ozu does is much more difficult and mysterious than what Mizoguchi does. And this is a glimmering extolment coming from the master of mystery. You see, a single gesture or facial expression in an Ozu film contains the whole world in it. It can talk about pain, suffering, happiness, wistfulness, joy, mystery, and so many other emotions. This is something few filmmakers can achieve. But I think this is also something many people overlook or don't appreciate enough. Simplicity, purity, beauty.


Nolan isn't much of an artist, and as such, he's not much of an opposite to Ozu. He's a craftsman. He's crafting silly time-bending tales, but he's doing it with a blindfold, and thus cannot orchestrate much apart from a glaring BLAAAAH sound effect from yet another robotic Hans Zimmer score.

I don't really need it to take me to other lands, I just need it to be the kind of movie where I don't guess the ending one act in.

Some of the greatest filmmakers of all time made movies that were simple and without surprises. Bresson spoiled many of his films himself at the beginning of the film. And thus comes a truth about art: Art is not about unpredictability. Ideally, all films should start with an explanation of how they're going to end. The viewer can then focus not on some worthless twisty, gripping nobody-saw-that-coming gimmick ending but just on the simple observation of how the film gets to it.

This is true of emotions, too. The greatest mastery is not to use sentimental music to elicit tears from the viewer, but to squeeze these tears out without any musical accompaniment at all. The true mastery is not to use National Geographic-lite "beautiful" shots of nature, but to compose the frame in such an eternally beautiful way that seemingly only Communist filmmakers can. Maybe because by discarding the capitalist mode of production and commercialism, they can focus on the beauty found within the faces of people and the inanimate stillness of things, both of which are forgone for twists, action, understandable plot points, and surprises at each corner, the typical toolset of craftsmen that look after nothing but money.



The factors I just mentioned, including "unpredictability", are some of the factors of conventional product-movie, a sign of cinephilic normism that sees movies as a means of excitement rather than the elevation of the soul.

But the events are ones we've all seen before. We've already lived it. A story should at least have some sense of imagination as well as observation, balancing the two. If we know what's going on through the whole movie, why bother seeing it? For the acting? The direction? That just means everything else about the movie is better than the story.

I've seen a few of his films:

Late Spring
Tokyo Story
An Autumn Afternoon
I Was Born, But . . .
Floating Weeds
A Story of Floating Weeds

I really liked or loved all of them. I think that he does an amazing job of capturing how big everyday moments can feel, and also the double-edged sword of growing up/aging. Generally speaking, there's also quite a bit of empathy toward most or all of the characters, so that the drama just comes from life being life.

His ability to distill the common place dramas of ordinary lives to their essence is poetry as it's most fundamental. It draws attention to the beauty of life. Of family. Of friendship. Of good times and bad times.


The idea that he should do more to make his films less like our everyday lives, is to kill what makes his movies so affecting and daring.

Well he's in my top 10 more than likely, with Tokyo Story and Late Spring my two favorites.

All of these comments (especially you, Mr. Minio) are very helpful. I have not made it to Ozu yet, but I am thinking that he will be my big project for the coming year.

As Communism is utopian, as utopian should be the filmmaker's struggle for unadulterated and pure beauty not commanded by lowly things like money or social status. The romanticization of the revolutionary figures, for example, (as disgusting as it is in general), can serve as a starting point for the romanticization of life in general, the effect of which is the stark visual beauty of perfect framing. If the creases on the actor's garment are a head-scratching conundrum that stops the director from achieving the most naturally beautiful shot, then they should do everything in their power to make the creases as aesthetic as it gets, something Communists can ostensibly do without much trying, as per their purported hate of artificiality and fakery, or beautification of the image beyond the real (or perceived) truth - the domain of capitalist product-art, the eye-candy candy drop that keeps the viewer in unconditional surrender to the shenanigans of the director-producer heinous duo.



To continue with the Communist thread, stories are a bourgeoisie invention. It's not what you say but how you say it.

I'm just gonna leave the whole Marcel Proust schpeel out of this and use another realistic movie or two. You can hardly get more realistic than Bicycle Thieves or Pather panchali because they are highly accurate portrayals of the poverty at the time. But the stories are always progressing. In other words, like your post, all Ozu did was flower up something extremely normal on camera and handle a generic everyday-man's story from pretty angles. That's how Ozu told it: the way we knew it was gonna happen. When I listen to a story, I want something more inspiring. Moviemaking is an art, and a story should be treated like an art you would pay for, and not like something you could pick up from the next door neighbor for free. And before anyone uses the "friends telling stories can be fun too" bit, the more interesting stories are still the ones you can't predict. Even as an author myself, I'd be lying to myself if I considered a simple story like that a better one than (or on par with) Citizen Kane or the Godfather, or even the other two movies I mentioned. Their are people who spend years on their stories with payoff, and they've spoken about it in interviews and these have been in documentaries and biopics, so to compare this to those favorably would be an insult to them.

Any late Ozu is better than The Godfather and infinitely better than Citizen Kane.

Anyway, whatever. Watch Tokyo Twilight.

I've only seen three of his films but I've loved/liked all of them. Late Spring was my first one and I thought it was fantastic. Tokyo Story is great as well. An Autumn Afternoon wasn't as good as those two, but it still was very good. I look forward to checking more of his films.

__________________

I like Ike Ozu.
My favorite foreign language (non-English) director. I like him better than Kurosawa. Loved everything I've seen from Ozu so far.