Ozu-120

[dave jenkins]

https://filmforum.org/series/ozu-120

Would love to see this but I will instead be in the country where this guy comes from and will miss the whole thing. I would particularly love to see the silent films with the live benshi narrator--never seen one of those before. Drink, here's your chance to get one up on me.

[dave jenkins]

One thing I regret is not being able to see some of these titles on 35mm. Assuming these are vintage 35mm spools, not some kind of digitally generated images transferred to film. I'd like to get a sense of how the images of old differ from their current DCP incarnations. So, if I were going to be around, I'd be very tempted to catch some or all of these showings.

35mm presentations:

Late Spring
6/9 5:20; 6/10 7:30; 6/11 7:00

Tokyo Story
6/9 7:40; 6/18 7:55; 6/29 8:10

Good Morning*
6/21 8:25

Equinox Flower*
6/18 5:25

The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice
6/16 7:15

Early Summer
6/17 8:10

An Autumn Afternoon*
6/24 5:15

Floating Weeds*
6/26 8:00

The asterisks (*) indicate color films

There are showings of 35mm prints for two other films, A Hen in the Wind and Early Spring, but I don't care for them, so I wouldn't be going to those even if I could.

[dave jenkins]

Late Spring
6/9 5:20; 6/10 7:30; 6/11 7:00

I'll copy my take from the review thread here:

Late Spring (1949) - 9/10. The film begins with a tea ceremony scene in which we are introduced to the heroine, Noriko (Setsuko Hara), who, if she doesn't wed soon, will have passed her sell-by date. We learn that she lives with her father in Kamakura, a suburb so distant from Tokyo it's actually a suburb of Yokohama. One morning we see Noriko accompany her father on his commute. The train journey from Kamakura to Tokyo, an hour-long trip in real time, is presented in a three-minute sequence. Significantly, all the station stops are elided, so that we get the illusion of a continuous journey without pauses. Yet those missing stops are still implied. The train is crowded, and the pair at first have to stand. Later, after a cutaway to the exterior of the moving train, we see that the father now has a seat--someone got off somewhere--but Noriko is still standing. Another cutaway, and another shot of father and daughter, now sitting side-by-side--there's been another stop. In this way, Ozu announces his technique of narrative through indirection.

Late in the fim, this technique provides a huge pay-off. During a trip to Kyoto, a final father-daughter outing before [SPOILER ALERT] her marriage, Noriko has a kind of epiphany--or apotheosis or catharsis or moment-of-true-feeling or something--as she lies on her futon, beside her father, waiting to doze off. The scene is edited thus: She asks her father a question; he does not answer, and then we see a shot of the father asleep; we get a shot of Noriko looking at him; then we cut to a shot of an empty vase in the alcove; then another shot of Noriko that lasts almost ten seconds; then a cut back to a long shot of the vase; then back to Noriko, with a new look on her face, almost in tears. A change has occurred, but it happened while we were looking away. And somehow the editing communicates the intensity of the moment to the viewer (this viewer, anyway).

The only thing about the film I don't like is that on occasion Setsuko Hara seems a bit more hysterical than is credible.

Ozu sometimes has trouble knowing when to end a film, but not here. A bit of meticulous fruit-paring provides a wonderful final image.

Probably not for Drink. There are many others, though, who have enjoyed/ will enjoy it.

[dave jenkins]

There Was a Father (1942) - 8/10.

The story is deceptively simple. High school teacher Horikawa (Ryu Chishu) takes responsibility for the accidental drowning of a student, resigns his post, and moves back to his hometown with his son, Ryohei (Sano Shuji). A model father, Horikawa insists that his son devote himself to his studies and "make something of himself in the world." Eventually, Ryohei is put into a dormitory while the father goes off to work in Tokyo. This effectively ends their life together, and throughout much of the movie the son pines for his father. However, whenever it seems they can live together again, "duty" in one form or another intervenes to make it impossible. On one such occasion, Ryohei exclaims to his father: "I've been looking forward to living with you since my junior high school days and I was so sure that this time I would get the chance, but now . . ." At this point, the father launches into his famous lecture on the absolute supremacy of duty: "Of course I want to live with you too. But that wanting and one's work are two different things. It doesn't matter what the job is, once it's given to you, it becomes your sacred vocation. Every man has his duty, which he must fulfill to the best of his ability. . . . Selfish thoughts are inappropriate; you have to throw away that part of yourself.

351, 352 Peter B. High The Imperial Screen

The two characters occupy two ends of a spectrum: the father represents giri (duty), and the son represents ninjo (human feeling). The focus is on the father, so naturally giri is emphasized. This explains why the film was approved by the wartime censor. It does not explain, however, the popularity of the film at the time, nor the critical recognition of it today as an enduring masterwork. That the film is artistically successful must be credited to its verisimilitude. Ozu achieves that truth by balancing giri with ninjo.

The father pursues giri all his life, never relenting, even to the point of death. But his story does not end there. The son collects his father's ashes and takes them with him to his new post (Ryohei has also become a teacher). The boy's final remark, which is not ironic, is that he and his father will finally live together. In Japan, even the dead must fulfill giri, and are not allowed to depart completely from this world. The son will no doubt construct an altar to his father in his home and pray to him every day. Ryohei is both a dutiful son and (presumably) a dutiful teacher, but his sense of ninjo is also fulfilled. He thus achieves a kind of balance never available to his father.