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 […]
Mr. Yoshii (Tatsuo Saito), an office clerk, has moved his young family into a new neighborhood in the suburbs, strategically located just a few blocks from his employer, Mr. Iwasaki (Takeshi Sakamoto). One afternoon, while playing outdoors, Yoshii’s younger son, Keichi (Tomio Aoki) catches the attention of the neighborhood children, among them, Iwasaki’s son, who […]
A college student’s (Tatsuo Saito) underhanded scheme to cheat on his final examinations backfires when the boarding house matron sends the shirt on which he has scribbled his notes out for laundry. Now faced with remaining as a student for another year and bearing the dubious distinction of being the only student in the household […]