On the occasion of the family patriarch’s 69th birthday, the noble and privileged Toda family has assembled for a formal commemorative photograph and a dinner banquet that would prove to be their father’s last. Forced to sell the family home in order to settle their father’s unresolved, business-related debts, Mrs. Toda (Ayako Katsuragi) and the […]
A funny, lighthearted, but nevertheless, astute social satire, What Did the Lady Forget? centers on a genial college professor who, forced by his stern and domineering wife to play golf, fabricates an alibi and arranges to spend the evening at a student’s house. However, his plans are compromised when his assertive and progressive thinking niece […]
The Only Son is a quintessential Ozu home drama on the relationship between a widowed mother (Choko Iida) and her son, Ryosuke. Encouraged by her son’s ambitious elementary school teacher (Chishu Ryu), the mother slaves at a silk manufacturing factory, sacrificing personal and financial comfort and security, in order to support Ryosuke’s education so that […]
Kagamijishi is a short performance film intended to introduce non-native viewers to Kabuki theater and also to showcase the skill of Kikugoro IV, a legendary, multi-generation Kabuki artist. Ozu’s repeated fixed position shots (one on center stage, a second to the side of the stage, and a third from an upper balcony) are evident throughout […]
The first of Yasujiro Ozu’s Kihachi ‘Everyman’ pictures after Takeshi Sakamoto’s recurring role as the stubborn and uneducated, but goodhearted rogue, Passing Fancy is a thoughtful, humorous, and accessible domestic portrait of family, community, and everyday life in the poor, working class suburbs of Tokyo (a social milieu that Ozu would return to in other […]
In a poor, working class district of Tokyo, a woman named Chikako Shimamura (Yoshiko Okada) shares a modest apartment with her younger brother, Ryoichi (Ureo Egawa). Despite seemingly insurmountable economic hardship, Chikako has managed to make ends meet, working every day in her full-time employment as an office typist, and every evening on commissioned translations […]