In the past week, I had my first viewings of any movies by Yasujiro Ozu, from the local library's DVD collection. A combo review for the first ones I saw, two versions of the same story:
Floating Weeds (1959)
A Story of Floating Weeds(1934)
I had heard about Ozu's status as one of the great directors, and one who had a singularly personal style, so this one-two punch from Criterion was an excellent introduction to his work. I watched the '59 version first. The minimalist camera style--no fades, zooms, wipes, tracking shots, or anything except straight-on static shots--takes a bit of getting used to, maybe a little more so with this later version of the story because there's a lot of cutting. Not for long, though, since the beauty of the composition of practically every shot draws most of your attention. The simplicity of the story is somewhat deceptive, since Ozu focuses more on the characters than on plot development (though there is plenty of it, certainly in the second half of the film), and the end result is very moving. The colors in almost every scene are striking, very bright and intense.
The original silent version, from '34, is about half an hour shorter, so the story moves along at a brisker pace. Some of the outdoor scenes in this one were really breathtaking, even more so than in the '59 version. Another strength of this version is the actor playing the son, who also played the scheming troupe member in the later version. He was much better than the rather wooden actor who played the son in the '59 version (Donald Richie admits this in the liner notes, and in defense of Ozu, he points out that the young guy in the '59 film was the son of a highly placed studio exec), not to mention more handsome, which made the main plot a bit stronger. All the other main actors, in both versions, were great. There are a handful of tracking shots in this version, but the style that's so apparent in the later film is already quite visible in this one.
The commentaries from Donald Richie and Roger Ebert were great, providing lots of interesting background on Ozu's themes and stylistic techniques, as well as his life and career.
Then it was onto...
Tokyo Story (1953)
A very beautiful film with probably even more subtle undertones than Floating Weeds, since this one focuses entirely on one family. The story moves to a pretty dramatic development in the last third of the movie, which is perhaps one of the reasons why this one stands out for many critics and filmmakers (it was in the Top 10 of the most recent Sight and Sound poll, #5 if I remember right). I was a little confused for a while about who was in the family and who was an in-law, since the subtitles translated everything as "father" or "mother" whenever anyone addressed the old parents (maybe this is an element of Japanese culture that I wasn't aware of). But that was all resolved at one point or another for all the characters involved. The overall effect for me was similar to the two Floating Weeds films: gorgeous compositions all over the place, almost a story told in a series of still photographs, but also with very effective performances from all the leads.
I haven't listened to the commentary on this one yet, but watching the 2-hour doc from the early '80s on Ozu's life and career, I wasn't the least bit surprised to hear several stories from actors who worked with him about how exacting he was in what he wanted them to do, sometimes going through dozens of takes to get precisely what he wanted. Even before I got to any of the supplements on these DVDs, I figured that he must have been extremely precise with his direction of the actors (and the rest of the crew as well) because of the overwhelming emphasis he placed on static compositions. I imagine he was quite difficult to work with for some people, but Ebert told an anecdote in his commentary (on the '59 Floating Weeds) that after Ozu did take after take of the scene in the rain between the troupe leader and his mistress, the two actors were very worn out from the rough conditions, so he gave them two days off. Another common theme through the commentaries and the doc was with lots of cast and crew members who didn't quite understand why they were being asked to do what they were doing, why Ozu was so particular about this or that detail, or why they were playing some scenes with what seemed to be almost no emotional inflections. But, in every case, when they saw the final result, they understood everything.
Needless to say, I'm definitely going to seek out other Ozu films to see. There are two other Criterion DVDs, Good Morning and Early Summer, so I'll try to track those down. And there have been/are film retrospectives in Seattle and Chicago, so I definitely hope they make their way to the Washington DC area at some point.
(5/10)
My advise - Watch the original instead.
