Ozu YasujirĹ? The Soul of Japanese Cinema? Dick Stegewerns University of Oslo
Ozu Yasujirō (1903-1963) • 1903 Tokyo, 1913 countryside, film fan, 1923 back to Tokyo, Shochiku. Kido Shirō’s Kamata studio • 1926 assistant director, 1927 director. Jidaigeki debut, followed by nonsense, marriage comedies, student comedies, gangster movies, film noir. Rush jobs, no stars. Modern boy with his own touch.
• Fragment 1 Hijosen no onna • (Dragnet Girl, 1933) • 1930 Introduction to the real Shochiku business. Home melodrama, shomingeki. • 1932 The success of Umarete wa mita keredo… Class conflict on the home front. • Fragment 2 Umarete wa mita keredo • (I Was Born But, 1932)
• 1933-36 More lower-class films. The ‘Kihachi mono’. • Fragment 3 Tokyo no yado (Tokyo Inn, 1935) • • 1936 First Ozu talkie • 1937 Ozu goes to war. China. Yamanaka Sadao RIP. • 1938-1946 Wartime slump. No propaganda talent. Losing the war in a Singapore cinema.
• 1947 Senior Shochiku director. Lower class during occupation. Depressive • 1949 - 1953 ‘The real Ozu’. The plights of the modern middle class family. • The Noriko (Hara Setsuko) trilogy Banshun, Bakushu, Tokyo Monogatari • 1958 Ozu goes colour • 1959-62 The Ozu remakes
Ozu’s Style • Script = shots, dialogues, time. No plot. • • Camera = low, immovable, distant, frontal • Fragment 4 Tokyo-ga (Wim Wenders, 1985) • Ozu’s ‘camera guard’ Atsuta Yūharu
• Location = inside, the room, set locations (the bar, the office, the restaurant) • Studio = total control • Outside mainly trains • Actors = not acting but merely being in the centre of the screen. • No drama, no emotion, sparse unnatural dialogue • No flat characters, but repeating characters. Same actor, same name
• Editing = short, rhythmical. Linear story. Solid order of shots. • No fade in etc but connecting ‘pillow shots’. • Fragment 5 Sanma no aji (1962)
Ozu’s themes • Life, the family, generations adapting to modern life. • No politics, no social critique • Resignation with a smile.
Reception of Ozu • In the West only from the 1970s onwards. Auteur symbolic of traditional Japan. Paul Schrader, Donald Richie. • Early 1980s Noel Burch. Ozu as anti-Hollywood • Late 1980s David Bordwell, Wim Wenders. Ozu as a truly original and arguably the best film director in film history. • What’s in a vase? • Fragment 6 Bakushu (Early Summer,1951)