It’s Ozu’s first talkie and one of Ebert’s great movies—it’s the best Ozu I’ve seen to date along with floating weeds(1934) as it is his most rigid stylistically
His famous pillow shots—starts film with a lantern before a montage—he goes back to the lantern often here but to the floating laundry- most- I counted 7-8 times going to that laundry
Sedentary camera
From ebert” He tells these stories within a visual frame so distinctive that I believe you can identify any Ozu film after seeing a shot or two, sometimes even from a still. How he came upon his approach I don’t know, but you see it fully mature even in his silent films. For Ozu, all depends on the composition of the shot. He almost never moves his camera. He usually shoots from the eye level of a person seated on a tatami mat. He often begins shots before characters enter, and holds them after they leave. He separates important scenes with “pillow shots” of exterior architectural or landscape details. He uses evocative music, never too loud. I have never seen him use violence. When violence occurs, people commit it within themselves.Chishu Ryu — the teacher who, after moving to Tokyo, fails to realize his own dreams and, as the son bitterly tells his mother, is “reduced to frying pork cutlets.” This was Ryu’s seventh film for Ozu. In all he was to appear in 52 of Ozu’s 54 films, between 1929 and 1962. He is the old father in “Tokyo Story” (1953). A reminder that we’re watching along with Ozu is his little tea pot. In every film of his I’ve seen, a small tea pot appears here or there in most of the interior scenes. It has a way of moving around, not that you’d notice that. A little unremarkable tea pot. In his first color film, we discovered it was red. Of course it was. On a Japanese scroll, red is the color of the artist’s mark.
A few shots (not throughout or it may be a masterpiece) have a loaded mise-en-scene blocking the frame like Von Sternberg in blue angel– we have a bike wheel and lanterns hanging from the ceiling in frame in one instance- gorgeous
It’s heavy drama melodrama- he’s touching realism but several scenes where multiple characters cry- it feels earned at the end
Starts film with a quote about children and parents—train visits—out of town parents who are traditional and kids who are modern and live in Tokyo—generational films
Ozu as an editor lingers, he doesn’t just go to the next scene— it’s weird—he makes films where I look forward to the pillow shot transitions—or the passage of time breaks of pillow shots within a scene
Swaying laundry and flags
It’s a mature slow-burn story that wins you over—pretty devastating and earned relationship between son and mother—inspired tale of sacrifice
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