This cycle of three films finds Ozu saying goodbye to making movies about small children or college kids (for the most part). We see his signature lead actor (Chishu Ryu) take on more substantive roles, in addition to the rise of a silent-era comedy star (Takeshi Sakamoto) and the big break for a legendary Japanese actress and filmmaker (Kinuyo Tanaka).
23: Spring Comes from the Ladies (1932)
Haru wa gofugin kara
status || script survives, no negative or prints survive
Based on Bordwell's synopsis, this one was a mishmash of elements Ozu had used in previous films, and it wasn't much more than an easily-digestible, goofball studio comedy.
Bordwell had the links to previous features dead-on, so I'm paraphrasing his citations. A tailor is owed money (like Dreams of Youth) by irresponsible college kids who are cramming for exams that they worry about failing (like Days of Youth and I Flunked, But...). The search for employment in an era of high unemployment is terribly depressing for the young men at the story's center (I Graduated, But..., The Lady and the Beard, & Tokyo Chorus).
Tatsuo Saito plays Kato, a college student who owes Sakaguchi the tailor (Takeshi Sakamoto) money. He promises to pay, but only if the tailor takes Kato's exams for him. The tailor then proceeds to flunk the exams. Kato consoles the tailor, who will now go unpaid by his flunked debtor. In a moment of rare, blatant self-reference for Ozu, Kato tells the tailor that it'll work out, "haven't you seen I Flunked, But...?"
Kato falls into depression, but his spirits are lifted when he realizes that he can spend another year hanging out at the campus coffee shop with his girlfriend Masako (Hiroki Izumi, who only made four movies, and just this one with Ozu).
Kato's buddy Yoshida (Jiro Shirota) owes the same tailor money. On top of that, he meets the tailor's sister Miyoko (Setsuko Inoue, from the troubled Beauty's Sorrows) and falls for her. Sakaguchi the tailor tries to seize on the good fortune that Yoshida actually graduated by helping him get a job (so that he'll then pay his outstanding debt).
Yoshida confounds the tailor by weaseling out of paying once again. Yoshida's boss makes arrangements for the graduate's marriage to the tailor's sister, and Sakaguchi loses it. He starts meandering around, handing tailoring bills to random students, and saying "Spring comes from the ladies, but debts must be postponed", which I take to be a colloquial expression that defies literal translation.
Worth noting:
Takeshi Sakamoto, who plays Sakaguchi the tailor here, had worked with the director off and on since Ozu's second film, The Dreams of Youth. He began taking on more substantive roles during this period. In fact, he would soon play one of his signature roles. A loose trilogy of Ozu films centers around Sakamoto's hard-luck, salt of the earth Kihachi.
This is the first title of an Ozu film that directly calls out the name of a season or the passage of time, a theme found in all but two of his last ten films.
24: I Was Born, But... (1932)
Otona no miru ehon - Umarete wa mita keredo
status || fully preserved: script, original negative, and prints exist
on disc (USA/R1) || Criterion's Eclipse Silent Ozu (Amazon link / Criterion Store link), which also includes Tokyo Chorus (1931) and Passing Fancy (1933)
on disc (UK/R2) || included in BFI's Good Morning (Region B) Blu-ray on a DVD
streaming (USA) || Hulu Plus (requires subscription)
how to watch || the Eclipse set is better bang for your buck than the BFI import, unless you have a Region B player for Good Morning
The full title of this one actually translates to I Was Born, But...: A Picturebook for Grown-ups.
The most popular early Ozu feature also has a plot that sounds like a Yakuza crime epic if you leave out minor (but crucial) details. Two brothers rebel against their weak-minded, straitlaced father. They move to a new town and, after taking a licking initially, they take over the local gang. The movie culminates in a violent outburst, imprisonment, and a hunger strike.
The movie is actually about two young boys and the various struggles they endure making a couple of major adjustments. It all starts with their parents moving them to the suburbs.
Most of the runtime is dedicated to their settling in at a new school. A gang of bullies scare them away from going to class. Later, they are crushed to learn how inconsequential a paper-pusher their father is at work. Their impression all along has been that dear ol' dad is an alpha lord of the office world.
Hideo Sugawara (l.) and Tomio Aoki (aka "Tokkan kozo", r.)
The older brother is played by Hideo Sugawara, who played the bratty son in Tokyo Chorus opposite Tokihiko Okada. The younger brother, who steals the film, is good ol' Tomio Aoki, credited here as Tokkan Kozo, after his breakout role in 1929's Tokkan kozo just three years previous. His star rose so quickly, he adopted it as a stage name for the rest of his career. This time, Tatsuo Saito plays his father instead of his kidnapper. "Tokkan Kozo" had become a kid superstar in the mold of Mickey Rooney. He specialized in broad humor, recurring gags, and chewing all of the scenery he's given.
Seiichi Kato (leaning, center) as Taro, holding court at a "gang" junta
Mitsuko Yoshikawa, who had worked on seven previous Ozu features (most of them now lost), plays the mother. Child actor Seiichi Kato plays Taro, the wealthy son of the company boss. Kato would go on to play another notable role in A Mother Should Be Loved.
Tatsuo Saito as the salaryman dad, revealing a submissive attitude toward his boss in front of his kids.
After learning that their dad is no big man with a great legacy to leave them, the brothers focus all of their frustration-borne anger at him. They then go on a hunger strike, echoed in Good Morning, Ozu's 1957 re-working of this early critical and popular success. Even though things end relatively happily, the lingering generational conflict leaves you wondering "who will these young boys become?" at the film's end.
The theme of strife between parents and children becomes more pronounced in Ozu's films as time goes on. We also see much fewer young kids featured, with adult children taking their place. Ozu himself admitted that he "[started out making] a film about children and ended up with a film about grown-ups." I'm not alone in feeling that I Was Born, But... was a major discovery point for Ozu.
Older brother goes apeshit.
Even though many of his next few pre-WWII films have little to do with the themes in IWBB, he was indisputably drawn to them like a calling from a higher power. The struggle within Japanese society between traditional dominant/submissive relationships is also opened up here. IWBB leaves these questions answered in an open-ended fashion, and they will be explored further after WWII.
One of the boys sort-of sneaking around...
Boys being boys
The movie has worn its eight decades very well, and is just as watchable as Charlie Chaplin comedies like The Kid, as well as the films of Keaton and Lloyd (a pair of Ozu's great early influences).
The kids are portrayed like real kids, and the movie is fun and disarming while at once so honest and realistic. It's just as relatable, 80 years later.
The next one is a bit more by the numbers.
Kinuyo Tanaka (l.) and Tatsuo Saito (r.)25: Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? (1932)
Seishun no yume imaizuko
status || fully preserved: script, original negative, and prints survive
on disc (UK/R2) || BFI's Ozu Student Comedies set (13.99 GBP, or ~$23 USD) also includes I Flunked, But..., The Lady & The Beard, and I Graduated, But...
on disc (Japan/R3) || OOP 6-DVD set includes surviving work from Days of Youth (1927) through Dragnet Girl (1933), but with no English subtitles ($270 USD minimum)
streaming || Hulu Plus (requires subscription)
how to watch || BFI's Ozu Student Comedies set.
how to release it in Region 1 || Package it with the other "Student Comedy" movies like the BFI did, since none of the Ozu films included are available in the USA.
I didn't think too much of this next one in and of itself. This was in part due to contrasting it with I Was Born, But..., which I had re-watched earlier the same day.
Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? represents an interesting waypoint in Ozu's career, in that so many elements of his prior salaryman and college films are echoed. To some extent, they're left behind here. Where Now finds Ozu once again toiling in the realm of student comedy, with the lead characters just about to enter the job market. The main guy must resolve his feelings for a seemingly heaven-sent love interest and struggle against an abrupt jump into adulthood.
The three buddies: (l. to r.) Saito, Ryu, and Ozu one-timer Takeda
Where Now's "son of privilege" protagonist Horino (Ureo Egawa) is content to goof off in college with his three pals. They all would prefer to delay their descent into the "real world" of adulthood. Tatsuo Saito plays the bumbling and awkward Saiki, one of these close friends. Chishu Ryu appears as the "rascal" friend, and Haruo Takeda plays "the fat friend". Takeda only worked with Ozu this once. Ryu Horino falls for Oshige (Kinuyo Tanaka), a cute girl who works in the campus soda shop.
Kinuyo Tanaka as Oshige
Ureo Ugawa as Horino
Horino doesn't really show much interest in getting a job or the women who push themselves on him. Our beloved "nasty bad girl" Satoko Date (from Walk Cheerfully and Lady & the Beard) appears as a booze and smoke-fueled party girl who is obsessed with trapping Horino into marriage (with the aid of Horino's uncle). She plays somewhat unhinged and boy-crazy, but she does sosympathetically for the first time. Horino goes a bit too far when pushing back against her advances. He gets unreasonably vicious in tearing down her self-confidence.
One of my favorite Ozu "character girls", Satoko Date.
Date's character is a pushy caricature in the "annoying golddigger" mold, but she doesn't deserve the coarse hostility that Horino rains down on her. This interchange shows Horino to be the first student protagonist of Ozu's who is not generally sympathetic. She later gives up after discovering that he interests...elsewhere.
SOME SPOILERS BEGIN (skip ahead if you wish)
While "the boys" prepare to cheat their way through exams, Horino receives word that his dad is at death's door. His father dies shortly thereafter, and he inherits his dad's company. Next we see a scene that's a bungling, semi-slapstick coronation of the new boy King. Horino's old pals then come begging him to help them cheat on their exams and then, subsequently, asking him for salary jobs. A year passes.
Horino continues to court Oshige, unaware that one of his closest pals has become engaged to her. Horino inevitably discovers this, but before that happens, the friend releases her from obligation so that Horino won't fire him in retaliation. The friend has no choice but to save his job, since he has to provide for his elderly mother.
Horino uncovers the reason behind it all and then reprimands his friend for his cowardice and starts beating the ever-loving shit out of his "buddy". Just when you think he's going to let up, he just keeps going. Where Now goes from romantic comedy to revenge drama in he span of about thirty seconds. It's a jarring, sudden moment of violence that is unparalleled at this point in Ozu's filmography.
Oshige thought that super-wealthy Horino was beyond her social reach, so she hooked up with Horino's friend out of pity. Once armed with this knowledge, Horino insists that his friend and Oshige marry to satisfy traditional social propriety in spite of the fact that Oshige still prefers Horino.
One of many departing train shots found in Ozu's work
SPOILERS END
Unlike Tokyo Chorus, using your connections from your college days causes more problems than it solves. Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? distances itself from the ideal happiness of prior features (The Dreams of Youth, Days of Youth) by employing the imperfect resolution of the real world.
Oshige comes off as a mere piece of property, with no real control over her fate. No one gets a majority of what would make them happy. Life goes on regardless.
Up Next
Later this week, we'll look at Kinuyo Tanaka (the actress who plays Oshige) playing a starkly different kind of woman in Dragnet Girl. Tanaka previously acted for Ozu in the first two "But..." movies and Young Miss in supporting parts. She started acting on film when she was 14, and had quite a future ahead of her. A reference Appendix article on her will appear after installment 6, "Fallen Women and The Dragnet Girl".
Discovering Ozu is an ongoing series of articles designed to introduce curious cinephiles to the work of Japanese master filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu.
Essential sources include: David Bordwell's book Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema, Donald Richie's Ozu: His Life and Films, and the various booklets and featurettes produced by The Criterion Collection. Quick reference often comes from definitive Ozu fansite "Ozu-san".
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