The Ozu thread.

We'll see what the prints of the silents look like...hopefully they're not the same prints that have been banging around for 20 years.

i. they felt like i wasn't supposed to be seeing them. like they were a kind of historical archive of japanese (?) relationships and etiquettes of the time acted out rather than written then locked away in a timecapsule (i.e. japan).
ii. they were relentlessly slow.
iii. it ws quite odd seeing the same actors playing similar roles differently, it's a simple thing to say i suppose but it jst fetched up as quite odd.
iv. the colours!
v. the scene near the end of one of them (sorry my memory is really quite sketchy of these films, i'm not too sure i'm tht big a fan of ozu) with the old woman and the old woman picking things from a river, smoke in the background, 'someone must have died', 'but the crows haven't moved' (i may be mis-remembering this).
vi. the cramped architecture.
vii. i didn't notice the music at all, is it really that good?
viii. the colours!

I enjoyed the strange jazzy score for "An Autumn Afternoon" which stays at full blast no matter if its a comic or a noncomic scene, and even serves--welcomely-- to confuse the two, such that half the audience will be laughing and half dabbing their eyes at the same time. The score for "Early Summer" just seemed to underline a few too many times emotions that were already made plain through other means, and also tried--unsuccesfully thank god--to smother other, more complex emotions that might emerge unexpectedly as they are wont to do when watching Ozu's films.

You're probably right that Ozu's reputation is no greater in England than here in France. I was just surprised, given Paris's reputation as the Mecca of great cinema, that this series has arrived without much fanfare.

his films sometimes fare ok on video but for the moment i have no interest in video at all.

why would you want to devote yourself to a symptomatic reading of the most deliberate of all filmmakers?

might be rewarding. i'm not quite sure what you mean anyway: lang and hitchcock were deliberate filmmakers and ppl still read their times into their work, so why not ozu? he was working through the most momentous 2 decades in japanese history, after all.

I saw the recent re-release of 'Floating Weeds' - reminded me of John Ford a great deal - the colours, the folksy humour, the conservatism with a small c, etc.

Wasn't the original negative of 'Tokyo Story' destroyed in a fire?

Hmm...Ford and Ozu...

Bordwell's book is in print as far as I know, and there is no better book on Ozu.

Anyhow, as I am coming to realize again, Ozu excels at making movies where the poignancy doesn't necessarily reveal itself in full until the end, where it sneaks up on the audience almost suddenly. Here it's particular well-drawn, the longish scene where Chishu Ryu begins peeling an apple and then hunches over in sadness.

I wonder how many Ozu films deal with marrying off a daughter, exactly. I think I've seen at least six myself.

This film has two shots, one toward the end and one at the very end, that effect a turning of the earth...one vertically, the other horizontally, each shot among the most stunning I have seen. The final shot is the greatest gift the cinema has given me, I am awed by it each time and more each time.

and i'm going to be in nor cal that weekend. hmmm...

''v. the scene near the end of one of them (sorry my memory is really quite sketchy of these films, i'm not too sure i'm tht big a fan of ozu) with the old woman and the old woman picking things from a river, smoke in the background, 'someone must have died', 'but the crows haven't moved' (i may be mis-remembering this).''

well, there are two exchanges between those two, the first:

[looking the crows]'someone must have died'
the woman says: no smoke (no one has been cremated)

the it cuts to the family members talking abt the dead man, his sister comes in, i think the older brother doesn't make it.

smokes starts to come out

and then it has three points of view: 1) most of the family in that room looking at the smoke, 2) the two ssiters by the river looking at it and 3) the two ppl by the river.

'someone has died'
then something about how nature successfully replaces the dead and then finally cuts to the family crossing the bridge, a further exchange, shot of the crows.

END

(that's how i remember it)

Like ralph says i really enjoyed the colours, the stillness, the way it was shot, how there doesn't seem to be too much drama (the stillness maybe diluting the fact that many of the characters are making decisions that will shape the remainder of their lives) and yet your attention is held throughout...wish i had taped it actually bcz this is one for repeated viewings.

but anyway, they are broadcasting another one tomorrow.

from the write-ups I do not entirely understand the appeal.

i generally dislike those makingofs (that's what they call them in france, makingofs) and such things

what kind of question is this? Like most enjoyers of films, I often read write-ups of films and think "that sounds like the kind of film I want to see". In this case I thought the opposite. The films sounded overly static and almost stagey in their use of unmoving cameras and long shots. Obviously, this could work far better in practice, and IFI write-ups of fortchcoming films have been known to completely over or under-sell films in the past.

yeah i thought that would be the case from yr first post. The stillness would put you off. Just thought to ask since i don't know what kind of movies you like.

perceived slowless involves a lot of different factors. the length of shots, the amount and speed of movement of the camera, the amount and speed of movement in the frame, the story materials, etc. etc. by a lot of these standards--and again compared to your typical hollywood movie--ozu is slow. but is the overall effect that of "slowness" as in "boredom"? i dont think so, but then im a rather fanatical partisan so i would say that. certainly his films are not slow in the way that those by angelopoulos or hou hsiao-hsien can be slow. and many of his earlier films--the ones you probably arent likely to see--are quite fast, like a lubitsch or a von sternberg film.

anyway; i just found an article by jonathan rosenbaum called "is ozu slow?" its typically discursive and poorly structured and annoying for that (typical for rosenbaum that is) but there are some worthwhile tidbits in there: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/4/ozu.html

julio ozu's films were almost without exception very popular upon their release, and "tokyo story" only took about a decade after its formal introduction to europe and america to begin placing in the top 10 polls of the major film magazines. i'd say they have a pretty wide appeal among people who will search out older films.

He's a bit of a blank spot with me I guess cause his movies seem hard to come by - Region 1 Criterion boxes - but I love Mizoguchi, Street Of Shame is one of my favourite films.

Film Forum is showing everything there is right now for the 120th/60th anniversary of his death. https://filmforum.org/series/ozu-120

I just got back from seeing EARLY SUMMER for the first time.

that Ozu moment when I try to triangulate every combination of Early and Late seasons to recall which Ryū/Hara paired relationship is in it

> A complete retrospective of Yasujirō Ozu's extant work

no "record of a tenement gentleman"? - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039651/

nor Kabuki (aka The Lion Dance, an early sound doco) nor Tokyo Chorus (which is on Criterion Eclipse)

RECORD OF A TENEMENT GENTLEMEN already played. TOKYO CHORUS was scheduled for the 26th.

You can can click on the flyer. Or the numbers. Or scroll down.

that Ozu moment when I try to triangulate every combination of Early and Late seasons to recall which Ryū/Hara paired relationship is in it

xp ah - I did click and I did scroll down, but none of those titles showed for me.

Maybe they are not available in your region.

TOKYO CHORUS is on the web page, TENEMENT GENTLEMEN you have to work harder and click Download the Flyer to see since it has gone off already.

caught I was born, but... + a contemporaneous short last night with benshi narration

https://www.screenslate.com/articles/i-was-born-hawaii

pretty great!

Cool! I saw that was happening but couldn't stay.

Nothing made me appreciate Chishū Ryū more than seeing Early Summer, where you realize he's a nasty middle-aged man instead of the dotard he plays in Late Spring and Tokyo Story.

Lol. Harsh but otm.

Wonder if I should try to see WHERE NOW ARE THE DREAMS OF YOUTH? tonight.

Okay, that was pretty good.

http://www.cineoutsider.com/reviews/bluray/t/three_films_by_yasujiro_ozu_br.html

so, record of a tenement gentleman gets a release, I've been waiting for that for a while. only is a 3-br set with two other films that i already have in bfi editions, dragnet girl and hen in the wind. apparently those are new transfers from 202x but still. might have to be a Christmas present to myself.