YASUJIRO OZU: A CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION
OZU'S COLLABORATORS
October 4 - November 5, 2003
A Special Event of the 41st New York Film Festival
Sponsored by
Grand Marnier
Text
by Derek Lam
(http://www.camerastylo.com).
right: Ozu with Shiro Kido, head of Shochiku's Kamata Studio
When I watch Ozu, I can see my father, my mother, my brothers and sisters. I
feel it's almost like a mirror reflection of my family -- Stanley Kwan
INTRODUCTION:
As a loyal employee of Shochiku who made few films for other studios, Ozu preferred working repeatedly with the same talent both onscreen and off. Indeed, one of the pleasures of seeing his work is to appreciate the family-like nature of his long-term collaborations and to recognize the many familiar faces from his troupe of Shochiku actors. Here are a few one is likely to remember from Ozu's films:
TATSUO SAITO
Days of Youth, I Flunked, But..., I Was Born, But..., Where Now are the Dreams of Youth?
Perhaps Ozu's most frequent collaborator of the '20s and '30s, Saito was a mainstay of the director's student comedies and salaryman films. As Ozu progressed from the carefree comedy of Days of Youth to the more disillusioned statements on class inequalities of I Was Born, But... and Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth, so did Saito mature from the happy-go-lucky student to the resigned salaryman.
CHOKO IIDA
Record of a Tenement Gentleman, The Only Son, Passing Fancy, An Inn in Tokyo, Floating Weeds
Her weathered visage bespeaking years of toil and experience, Iida received her
greatest Ozu roles as a self-sacrificing, blue-collar mother disappointed by
her underachieving offspring in The Only Son and as a hardhearted woman who
takes on the care of an abandoned child in Record of a Tenement Gentleman.
TAKESHI SAKAMOTO
Passing Fancy, An Inn in Tokyo, Floating Weeds, Record of a Tenement Gentleman
Immediately recognizable for his mustache, close-cropped haircut, and
stout physical appearance, Takeshi Sakamoto perfectly embodied the proletarian,
Edokko character of Ozu's Kihachi. Indeed, it is hard to imagine the director
conceiving any of the Kihachi films without Sakamoto in mind. At once honorable,
stubborn, brave, honest, and not a little foolish, Kihachi is among the
richest and most memorable characters in Ozu's oeuvre, as well as a clear
inspiration for Yoji Yamada's popular Tora-San series.
TOKIHIKO OKADA
The Lady and the Beard, That Night's Wife, Tokyo Chorus
One of the most handsome and dashing actors to grace Ozu's work, matinee idol
Tokihiko Okada was also a fine comic talent to boot. Though often
off-handedly dismissive of his early work, Ozu remembers being left in stitches
by Okada's hilarious performance as the old-fashioned, bushido-spouting
title character in the silent comedy The Lady and the Beard. Still, despite
that role and the convincingly desperate father who steals in order to save his
daughter in That Night's Wife, Okada gave his finest performance in Tokyo
Chorus, a wholly naturalistic and touching portrait of a young adult trying to
come to grips with life as an unemployed young parent.
Years later, Tokihiko's daughter, Mariko, would act in a number of Ozu's films,
most notably as the shrewd and pragmatic daughter-in-law who tries to
curb her husband's profligate obsession with golf clubs in An Autumn
Afternoon.
KINUYO TANAKA
I Graduated, But...,I Flunked, But..., Equinox Flower, The Munekata Sisters, A Hen in the Wind, Dragnet Girl, Woman of Tokyo, Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?
A true polymath of Japan's golden age cinema, Tanaka was not only a favorite
actor for directors Ozu, Mizoguchi, and Naruse; she was also a pathbreaking
female auteur who embarked on her own successful directorial career. In such
early Ozu films as Woman of Tokyo, her virtuous innocence shines through in a
number of maiden-like roles whereby she plays the object of desire to men far
less pure in thought. In the later films, the roles vary, but memorable turns
include the quietly suffering matriarch in Equinox Flower (presided over by an
old-fashioned, chauvinistic husband) and the self-abnegating, abused wife in A
Hen in the Wind. In a rare instance of casting against type, Ozu gave
Tanaka the role of a pistol-toting vamp in his delirious gangster fantasy,
Dragnet Girl.
SATOKO DATE
The Lady and the Beard, Walk Cheerfully
Tabloids in Ozu's day spread rumors about an affair between the director and
this sultry star, who, decked out in suitably mod garb and given a Louise
Brooks-style bobcut, played a vampish seducer brought to reform by
love in two Ozu films, the comedy, The Lady and the Beard, and the gangster
film, Walk Cheerfully.
TOKKAN KOZO, aka TOMIO AOKI
An Inn in Tokyo, Passing Fancy, I Was Born, But..., A Straightforward Boy
After debuting in the hugely popular A Straightforward Boy, where he plays a candy-demanding brat who gives his kidnappers a real headache, Tomio Aoki took on his character's name in the film, Tokkan Kozo ("a boy who charges into you"). Aptly described by scholar David Bordwell as "diabolical," Kozo is Ozu's Dennis-the-Menace, a rebellious and anarchic brat who contributes enormously to the liveliness of his critique of adulthood in I Was Born, But....
CHISHU RYU
There Was a Father, Late Spring, The Munekata Sisters, Early Summer, Tokyo Story, Tokyo Twilight, An Autumn Afternoon
Though he took on a variety of parts in Ozu's output, this most well-known of
his actors, whose name is virtually inseparable from Ozu, is perhaps best loved
for his benign, almost effete patriarchs in such films as Late Spring, Tokyo
Story, and An Autumn Afternoon. Ozu tapped into something more authoritarian
in Ryu with such roles as the brother who disapproves of his sister's fiancˇe
in Early Summer (and who indeed disciplines his children with corporal
punishment), and as the strict, self-sacrificing proselytizer who berates his
son for neglecting his teaching duties in There Was a Father. For the
remarkably grim Tokyo Twilight, Ozu gave Ryu's usual character an unusual
twist: here, he is a widower only by name: in fact, a ruse not to let his
daughters know he was abandoned by his wife years ago for a company subordinate.
SABURI SHIN
Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family, The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice, Equinox Flower
More obviously masculine and earthy than Ryu with his sturdy build and no-
nonsense manner, Shin Saburi provided an interesting contrast to the other
actor's more effete Ozu patriarchs. Perhaps the difference was one of class,
clearly the suggestion in The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice, where Ozu
celebrates Shin's modest and frugal proletarian manner against the bourgeois
niceties of his upper class wife. Ozu perhaps gave Shin his best role in
Equinox Flower, as a workaholic and remarkably dour pater familias who
stubbornly clings to old-fashioned, received ideas of propriety in spite of his
own better judgment.
SETSUKO HARA
Late Spring, Early Summer, Tokyo Story, Tokyo Twilight, Late Autumn
Ozu's most well-known regular collaborator besides Chishu Ryu, Hara's career
has been inextricably linked with that of Ozu's. The roles she has had as the
saintly and pious daughter or daughter-in-law in such films as Tokyo Story or
Late Spring have showcased her pure, unearthly luminosity. Indeed, the parts
have earned her the reputation of being Japan's "eternal virgin." Ozu
was above all enamored of Hara's good-heartedness as a person, commenting once
that "if there were more people like Hara, the world would be a better place."
CHIEKO HIGASHIYAMA
Early Summer, Tokyo Story
Complaining ominously of an aching body in the idyllic, seashore scene of Tokyo
Story, Chieko Higashiyama's matriarch is a gentle and unprepossessing presence,
which makes her quiet, barely acknowledged expressions of affection for her
children all the more touching and ultimately tear-inducing. In Tokyo Story,
her comments on aging and impending death go unnoticed by the carefree kids she
accompanies for a walk; in Early Summer, her yet undiminished hope to find her
missing son (presumably killed in action during the war), so softly expressed
in a conversation that it barely registers, is brusquely dismissed by her
husband. The latter scene perhaps represents Ozu's commentary, evident
throughout Equinox Flower, on the way matronly characters keep alive emotions
that have been repressed in patriarchs by masculine codes of behavior.
GANJIRO NAKAMURA
Floating Weeds, End of Summer
The earthy patriarch of Floating Weeds and the End of Summer, Nakamura was a
celebrated kabuki performer before he turned to film. As Mambei, the pater
familias gone AWOL who gleefully neglects the family sake business to go
philandering with a former mistress in the latter film, Nakamura is pitch-
perfect, offering yet another variation on Ozu's vision of the Japanese father.
KEIJI SATA
Late Autumn, Good Morning, Equinox Flower, An Autumn Afternoon
Often decked out in a smart-looking turtleneck, Keiji Sata is a prominent presence in late Ozu, associated with the young and the Westernized. As the English tutor of Good Morning or the newlywed enamored of expensive golf clubs in An Autumn Afternoon, Sata represents Ozu's view of the new, consumerist generation that came of age in the postwar Japan of the '50s and '60s.
SCREENWRITER: KOGO NODA
Ozu worked with a handful of screenwriters in his life. The closest of these
collaborations was with Kogo Noda, with whom he spent many an hour
drinking sake and working on screenplays together. According to Ozu, the
partnership had as much to do with similar sensibilities as compatible
lifestyles, both director and screenwriter enjoying staying up late to drink
and brainstorm. The friendship between the two was remarkably close, Noda
expressing his frank distaste for Ozu's extreme melodrama in That Night's Wife,
and the pair using their experiences working together in the hot springs to
provide inspiration for the scene in Tokyo Story where the elderly couple find
themselves harassed by all-night partiers during their hot spring visit.
COMPOSER: KOJUN SAITO
Ozu's favorite piece of music was Schumann's Traumerei, and like many Japanese
of his class and generation, was a lover of Western classical music. For the
majority of his films, he employed lush, romantic scores in a Hollywood
tradition, although he emphasized to his long-term composer Kojun Saito that
what he wanted was always cheerful music, no matter how gloomy the scene. In
some of the late films, the music borders at times on kitsch, anticipating, as
David Bordwell has observed, the use of lounge-like, cheerful music in the
films of Jacques Tati.
CAMERMEN: HIDEO MOHARA, YUHARU ATSUTA
A remarkable fact for someone who worked so long in the film industry: save the
one or two exceptions where he worked outside Shochiku (notably Floating Weeds,
where he collaborated with Mizoguchi regular, the great Kazuo Miyagawa) Ozu
used but two cameramen in his life: Hideo Mohara and, after him, his assistant
Yuharu Atsuta. Even to his cameramen, Ozu remained reticent about the reasons
behind his often idiosyncratic filmmaking decisions, prompting Atsuta to search
his mind for answers when asked by a retrospective catalogue why Ozu preferred
such low angles for his cinema.
STUDIO: SHOCHIKU
Ozu stayed loyal to Shochiku all his life, making the exceptional film for
Daiei or others only to fulfill personal obligations. The executive he was
closest to there was Shiro Kido, the famed head of Shochiku's Kamata division
whose predilection for "home dramas" celebrating the goodheartedness of common
folks leading ordinary lives led to the appellation of "Kamata-flavored" films.
On his death-bed, Ozu famously remarked to president Kido: "so, it's the home
drama, after all."
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