Electric Shadow

Noriko (#164)

This still frame comes from the breathtaking new Criterion Blu-ray of Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story, restored and remastered from a 4K film transfer. It is a noticeable upgrade as compared to the BFI's Region B Blu-ray, from which I've previously featured stills.

Tokyo Story (Criterion) 004.jpg

I finally saw a 35mm print of Tokyo Story three months ago, thanks to an Austin Film Society screening. I suggested a pair of screenings that I realize I've just missed, of A Story of Floating Weeds and its color sound remake, Floating Weeds. I hope people enjoyed them. I'm actually quite sad to have missed them, but there are worse things to have happen in life, you know?

NYC's Film Forum Retro Dedicated to Donald Richie

I jumped over to the Film Forum website to look something up about their Ozu retrospective, and found that it is now officially dedicated to the memory of Donald Richie. The program is very densely-packed, and as usual, I'm insanely jealous of a NYC retrospective series.

The good news for Austinites is that we might just be getting some Ozu early this fall. A conversation last night with Austin Film Society Director of Programming Chale Nafus resulted in what seems to be the fast-tracking of a rather unique event for the fall.

I mentioned to Chale that one of my favorite bits of Ozu trivia is that he remade more of his own movies than possibly any other major director. I've long wished for the right venue and timing to do a film and food event with Ozu, where the first feature is a silent (something like I Was Born, But... or A Story of Floating Weeds), everyone heads to an adjoining hall to eat Japanese food, and then the second feature is the sound/color remake (Good Morning or Floating Weeds).

Chale added that AFS is hoping to do more silent movies with live accompaniment by Austin's own Graham Reynolds, and that this would be a great fit. In general, Chale seems to have loved the idea, and it's apparently at the top of the pile for fall planning. Now that AFS has its own dedicated art house venue, the Marchesa Hall, they can actually do stuff like this. I couldn't be happier.

Ozu at 110

The Japan Times reports on digital restorations of Yasujiro Ozu classics debuting throughout the year, starting this week:

The restored “An Autumn Afternoon” will be screened for the first time at the Cannes International Film Festival starting Wednesday, while the refurbished version of “Equinox Flower” will be shown at the Venice Film Festival later this year, the studio said.

A special Ozu series will start June 22 at the Cine Nouveau theater in Osaka, while all of his works will be screened at the Jimbocho Theater in Tokyo starting Nov. 23.

Ozu, who directed “Tokyo Story” and other classics, was born Dec. 12, 1903, and died on his 60th birthday in 1963.

Events are also planned at places where some of his movies were shot, including Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, and Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture.

These "new" restorations are likely the same as the ones already on Blu-ray from the BFI (like the aforementioned Equinox Flower and  An Autmn Afternoon).

"Discovering Ozu" returns as early as this weekend, alongside multiple new "Soderberghopolis" (in the lead-up to Behind the Canelabra hitting HBO), and some new longform pieces debuting over the next two weeks.

Daily Grab 117: Tea and Rain

I've chosen two stills from Yasujiro Ozu's Floating Weeds, the 1959 remake of one of the master's greatest silent films. One of the below was used in the piece I wrote about Roger Ebert earlier today.

My love of Ozu's work began thanks to his commentary on Criterion's DVD edition of the movie and his Great Movies article. Both frames below come from Masters of Cinema's recent Blu-ray release.

From Roger Ebert's touching, evocative, and nuanced examination of this Great Movie:

For me, Floating Weeds (1959) is like a familiar piece of music that I can turn to for reassurance and consolation. It is so atmospheric--so evocative of a quiet fishing village during a hot and muggy summer--that it envelops me. Its characters are like neighbors. It isn't a sad story; the central character is an actor with a healthy ego, who has tried to arrange his life according to his own liking and finds to his amazement that other people have wills of their own. He is funny, wrong-headed and finally touching.

Donald Richie: 1924-2013

Donald Richie is the reason that Westerners know directors like Ozu and Kurosawa in the manner that we do. He passed away in Tokyo today. The New York Times piece is also worth a look.

He recorded the lion's share of the truly great commentaries on Japanese movies, including one I listened to recently for A Story of Floating Weeds, a true masterpiece that is often overshadowed by its color sound remake. His book OZU is, for many, the starting point for Western analysis of Japanese cinema.

I cite David Bordwell's Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema as my primary source text for Discovering Ozu, but I would not be writing the series without Richie's work, which is repeatedly cited by Bordwell throughout Poetics. Discovering Ozu is designed to be an evolving, dynamic series, which will be (and already has been) updated over time.

My friend Ryan (of CriterionCast) very generously sent me a copy of Richie's book a while back, an act of generosity that was a direct motivator for overhauling and re-working what was Cinema Ozu (now deprecated) into Discovering Ozu.

I had no delusions of ever getting to talk to Richie, let alone interview him, since I've been aware he was ailing for some time now. Like Ozu, I know his work from a distance. I may delve further into it. He lived a very interesting life. From first experiencing Japan in the army during post-WWII 1947, be went on to become the leading Western authority on Japanese culture by way of cinema.

I had already planned an appendix article on Richie some time soon, but now...I need to spend more time on it.

The photo of Ozu featured on the cover of Richie's OZU


Akira Kurosawa in the classic, director-pointing-a-camera pose

Discovering Ozu 7: The Kihachi Cycle

In Ozu's final film of 1933, we meet "Kihachi", as portrayed by Takeshi Sakamoto. Kihachi becomes Ozu's own sort of little tramp in the four movies he made in '34 and '35. Unlike Chaplin's iconic creation, Kihachi is always someone's father, an irrepressable screw-up, and a hard-luck guy all around.

From An Inn in Tokyo
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Criterion Adds 7 Ozu, 2 Soderbergh, and Loads More to Hulu Plus

My pal Ryan at CriterionCast compiled a complete list of all 42 titles just added to the Criterion channel on Hulu Plus today. Go check them all out. Since there's some direct relevance to the completist series I've been running, here's a look at why nine of them are a big deal to me:

Coincidentally, the two Soderbergh movies were featured in the most recent installment of Soderberghopolis (Schizopolis and Gray's Anatomy).

 

None of the seven Ozu movies added were previously available in the US in any form.

Among them, two are not available on disc even in the UK as part of the nearly-comprehensive BFI Ozu Collection (An Inn in Tokyo, Record of a Tenement Gentleman), one is set for release in March as part of their Gangster set (That Night's Wife), two are in the UK Student Comedies set (The Lady and The Beard, Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?), and the other two are included as extras on the Late Autumn and Early Summer Blu-rays (A Mother Should Be Loved, What Did the Lady Forget?).

This is great news, and makes it even easier to get into the work of Ozu without tracking down loads of expensive discs. As always, info bricks for each film will be updated to reflect this news.

BFI's Ozu Gangster Collection: full specs announced

I've had this preordered from Amazon UK for a while, but they've finally released the full specs on it, as seen on the Amazon page.

All three full features (Walk Cheerfully, That Night's Wife, and Dragnet Girl) and the surviving fragment of A Straightforward Boy get newly-recorded scores, along with another 10-minute chunk of Tony Rayns' 2010 Ozu: Emotion and Poetry lecture. I wish they'd just put the whole thing on a future Ozu release. New essays are included as on other BFI Ozu Collection releases.

I've been long-brewing a Discovering Ozu article that looks at all the home video releases out there. Most of the surviving movies are out now, with a rumor that a new HD restoration of The End of Summer might be happening.

I wish there were a profitable way for Criterion to release a four or five-movie Ozu Blu-ray set. Oh well.

Discovering Ozu 6: Fallen Women and The Dragnet Girl

Ozu takes a hard turn away from his student comedies, embracing major social and political issues in Depression-era Japan, including the plight of women. From prostitutes to...well...more prostitutes and reluctant mob girlfriends, his next three films reveal a filmmaker in transition.

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Discovering Ozu 5: A Farewell to Youth

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).

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The Daily Grab 31: Beautiful Weeds

Eureka/Masters of Cinema released Floating Weeds on Region B Blu-ray back in mid-December. It was Ozu's big color breakthrough. He'd done color previously at this point, but this is where the shot composition really used it most effectively for the first time.

The disc is locked for UK-region Blu-ray players, but it's readily available on Amazon UK (13.99 GBP or ~$23 USD).

The transfer is absolutely gorgeous, and the essay in the booklet by Ignatiy Vishnevetsky is very well-researched and written. If Region-B locking doesn't cause you problems and you don't care about the lack of disc-based extras, it's well worth your money (as it has been mine).

The movie is a reworking and remake of A Story of Floating Weeds, one of his big hits back in the silent days. This was one of the very rare times he made a movie at a different studio than Shochiku, which served as his home base for most of his career.

I'll be covering the silent original soon in Discovering Ozu, and will then double back on it (as I will with all his self-remakes) when I make it up to the color classic.