Product Description

In the late twenties and early thirties, Yasujiro Ozu was working steadily for Shochiku studios, honing his craft on dozens of silent films in various genres, from romantic melodramas to college comedies to gangster pictures and, of course, movies about families. In these three droll domestic films Tokyo Chorus, I Am Born But..., Passing Fancy Ozu movingly and humorously depicts middle-class struggles and the resentments between children and parents, establishing the emotional and aesthetic delicacy with which he would transform the landscape of cinema.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #46223 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 2008-04-22
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Box set, Black & White, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Silent, Subtitled
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 3
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 280 minutes

Amazon.com
Tenth in the Eclipse Series, Criterion's effort to reintroduce "lost, forgotten, and overshadowed classics," Silent Ozu includes three early Yasujiro Ozu films that are incredibly entertaining with or without the piano scores offered by Donald Sosin. Ozu, the master of bittersweet family dramas, apparently based later films on these three--Tokyo Chorus (1931), I Was Born But… (1932), and Passing Fancy (1933)--though there is no lack of action, passion, or cinematic revelry in these prototypes. Crafted at Shochiku studios, each film reveals an everyman's struggle to pay bills and raise children. Not only do these movies offer slice-of-life glimpses into 1930s Japan, but they also honor familial roles with humor and respect. It is Ozu's ability to cut from emotional pain to comedy and back again that lends his films such deep humanity. In Tokyo Chorus, a family struggling through unemployment and illness bond during tribulations they face. Shinji Okajima's (Tokihiko Okada) son (Hideo Sugawara) asks for a bike right before Okajima loses his position at an insurance office. Disparities between what is desired and what is provided grow from there. When daughter Miyoko (Hideko Takamine) needs hospitalization, Okajima and his wife stoop lower socially than they wish to make ends meet. The family's determination undercuts their poverty. When Okajima tells his wife, "I feel I'm getting old, I've lost my spirit," she offers to help him pass flyers out to drum up restaurant business where he works. Hilarious scenes, such as when the insurance office workers line up in the loo to secretly peek into cash bonus envelopes, make the most of silent physical comedy. Passing Fancy is similar, though the impoverished father, Kihachi (Takeshi Sakamoto), works to locate a wife to mother his hooligan son.

I Was Born But… is the funniest of the three, with its Little Rascals like attention to the child's point of view. It opens with a shot of car wheels spinning in mud, since Mr. Yoshii (Tatsuo Saito) has just moved his family from suburban Azabu to Tokyo. As Yoshii slaves to improve his employment status, comedic scenes focus on his two sons, Ryoichi (Hideo Sugawara) and Keiji (Tomio Aoki), who continuously ward off local bullies while trying to please their dad. When the boys ditch class to avoid getting beat up, the younger remembers that he was "supposed to get an E in calligraphy today." Lying in a meadow, he does his lesson and recruits a passerby to forge a good grade on his paper. Later, after classmates swallow raw sparrow eggs to impress each other, the two stars feed their eggs to the family dog, accidentally sickening him. Scenes become funnier as tensions build between the parents and their rebellious sons. It is amazing how much Ozu can achieve with so little dialogue, which crops up sparingly printed on cards. One may wonder if sound these days even improves our film viewing experience. In the least, Silent Ozu recalls quieter times, when perhaps just as much narrative was expressed. --Trinie Dalton

Customer Reviews

A resounding scream of silence.
From the director of such classics as Late Spring, Tokyo Story, and Floating Weeds, Criterion brings us a 3-disc collection from Japanese auteur Yasujiro Ozo. Although he has not yet reached the wide-spread acclaim of fellow countryman Akira Kurosawa, Ozu is starting to gain the recognition that he rightfully deserves.

Ozu began his career as a cameraman, and with hard work and determination he finally ascended the ladder to director. Once his position was earned, Ozu poured his creativity onto film with unmatched diligence, producing nearly half of his 50+ films in the first five years of his career. Sadly, many of these films are now lost, which adds to the enjoyment of these extraordinary, previously unreleased films from Criterion.


As the title suggests, the films in this collection were released during a portion of Ozu's silent career, ranging from 1931-1933. Ozu, along with the majority of the Japanese film industry, was somewhat hesitant about entering into talkies based upon the belief that emotions could be best conveyed with movements, expressions, and atmosphere, not dialogue. Ozu's first talkie was not released until 1936, the same year as Chaplin's final silent masterpiece, Modern Times. This period of his career marked Ozu's transition into social criticism as he both subtly and blatantly expresses his discontent with the culture of pre-WWII Japan.

Included films:

Tokyo Chorus (1931) - A man is fired from his job for reasons that would normally be viewed as commendable. The film from here follows his social and financial downfall as he does anything he possibly can to support his family. As in the other films in this collection, the plot of Tokyo Chorus sounds very dramatic but Ozu has a certain way of shedding a positive light onto each situation.

I Was Born, But... (1932) - A story of the hardships of childhood and the ways in which children view their parents in unappreciative and misconstrued ways. A comedy with some serious overtones.

Passing Fancy (1933) - The final film in this collection is about the unstable relationship of a widower and his son. It focuses on a child's attempts to help an alcoholic parent while also being resentful of the unstoppable forces of change.

And just in case anyone needs to know I'll post the technical aspects of the films as well.

Black and White
1.33:1
Dolby Digital Mono 1.0
Not Anamorphic
Japanese

One of Ozu's best films
It is a shame that the availability of Ozu films is not more widespread. 'I Was Born But...' exemplifies the concern for family relationships by one of the great masters of Japanese cinema. This film being silent should not be seen as an obstacle (nor should any silent film). It echoes the charming pathos and humour one might expect from a Charlie Chaplin classic.

The film tells the story of a family who relocate to suburban Tokyo. The two sons conflict with the local bullies - one of which is their father's boss's son. The boys deal with the local bullies only to 'lose face' over their father acting like a clown. What arises from this becomes a motif for Ozu - the estranged relationship between children and parents. For Ozu this is part of everyday life and is somewhat auto-biographical in thought as his own relationship with his father was also estranged. Further exemplified, is Ozu's motif of spatial violation and parallel action.

Ozu is the anti-thesis of the Hollywood blockbuster and he possesses a narrow choice of camera positions. Nowhere is the expression "less is more" more appropriate than here. While there is a rare use of a tracking shot, Ozu tends to prefer the static camera and usually shoots from the tatami mat. This sense of mimimalism seems entirely appropriate given that the film spends much time observing the boys everyday encounters.

This great filmmaker has a knack for expressing the tender beauty of everyday life and minimal expression. However, the sense of observation one feels is always pervaded with subtle touches of humour and emotional resonance - that it is impossible to become bored with it. I bless my lucky stars for the offerings that Ozu brought to the world of filmmaking.

Ozu's Early Silent Masterpiece
Ozu, Yasujiro: Japan's greatest director creates a funny, touching silent film about humor and pain between parents and their children as they all struggle to grow up.

Do not be put off by the lack of sound. This is a classic about childhood seen from a child's eye-view. A rarity, apparently newly available.

No other director in the world focused on the day-to-day goings on in an average family. Even his sound films seem to be almost silent in their straight-forward appreciation of the subtle changes that family members go through while going forward through time.