Very Short Biography Ozu Yasujiro b in Tokyo 12 December 1903 d in Tokyo 12 December 1963 Born as a son of the head clerk of a wealthy merchant Brought up in Matsuzaka where his father comes from ID: 810413
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Slide1
Ozu Yasujiro
‘The Extraordinary in the Ordinary’
Slide2Very Short Biography
Ozu
Yasujiro - b. in Tokyo 12 December, 1903 - d. in Tokyo, 12 December, 1963Born as a son of the head clerk of a wealthy merchant.Brought up in Matsuzaka, where his father comes from.Wild childhood and love of cinema.
Slide3Very Short Biography
Failed in university exams but found employment in a
local
primary school.Through his family connection, he entered Shochiku Studios as an assistant cameraman in 1923.
Slide4Very Short Biography
Since
The Sword of Penitence
(1927) to An Autumn Afternoon (1962), Ozu made 54 films (only 36 survived). No films during WWIIAfter the war (1947), he made one film a year.
Slide5Ozu’s Films
Ozu
survived transformations of cinema - silent
talkie colourTwo phases roughly divided by WWIIPrewar phase –
metteur
-en-scène
phase:
comedies
, farces, genre films (
sho-shimin
geki
= ‘common people’s drama’), even detective films.
Slide6Ozu’s films
His distinctive
themes
and styles began to emerge around 1936. Ozu returned to Japan in 1946 after spending war years in Singapore, and his themes and styles were his fixed signature in the post-war era.
Slide7Ozu’s
Mature Films
The Late Spring
(Banshun: 1949) - Story about the relationship between a widowed professor and his only daughter who is reluctant to get married because she would rather stay with father looking after him. The professor successfully devises a trick to entice his daughter to get married
, though this inevitably means their separation.
Slide8Ozu’s
Mature Films
Early Summer
(Bakushu’u: 1951) - Story about Noriko who is 28 years old and generally considered that she has passed her prime time for marriage. Her family and family friends try to introduce some men, but to everybody’s surprise, she suddenly announces that she will marry a
widower
with children.
Slide9Ozu’s
Mature Films
Tokyo Story
(Tokyo Monogatari1953)- An elderly couple visit
their children in Tokyo but are rather unkindly treated by them. Only their daughter-in-law (war
widow
) provides them with genuine care and spiritual relief. On their way back home, their mother is taken ill and dies without recovering her consciousness.
Slide10Ozu’s
Mature Films
Equinox Flower
(Higan Bana: 1958) - a successful middle-age businessman has two daughters. He proposes an arranged marriage for his elder daughter with a man from a politically influential family. The younger daughter declares that she only marries out of love. Despite of his progressive statement about relationship, their father refuses his consent to the marriage of her elder daughter to a man that he does not know.
Slide11Ozu’s
Mature Films
An Autumn Afternoon
(San’ma no Aji:1962) - a widowed
father lives with his only daughter who has reached a marriageable age. His colleague approaches him with a
prospective match
but he delays mentioning it to her. His chance meeting with his former high-school teacher and his daughter who remains unmarried in order to take care of her father makes him decide to spare his own daughter from falling into the same miserable fate.
Slide12Ozu’s Themes and Motifs
Plot is almost completely eliminated; his narrative
centres
on domestic relationships, events in a family - birth, growing up, falling in love, marriage, aging and death, and character studies. (Plot = a narrative devise to render a strong emotional or artistic effect.)Assemble similar characters - middle-class, lower middle-class parents or (widowed) parent, children in their late twenties or thirties, who are ready for marrying.
Slide13Ozu’s Themes and Motifs
Hirayama (father’s sir name) -
An Autumn Afternoon, Equinox Flower, Tokyo Story,
Noriko (daughter’s first name) - Early Autumn, Tokyo Story, Early Summer, Late SpringAkiko (daughter’s first name) - An Autumn Afternoon, The End of Summer, Koichi (son’s first name) - An Autumn Afternoon, Tokyo Story
Slide14Ozu’s Themes and Motifs
Similar narrative settings - a household in which parents and children live together. Children are ready to marry. Parents and children face the problems of separation and aging. Their settings are Tokyo or its suburbs (Kamakura). Working in office and commuting.
Slide15Ozu’s Themes and Motifs
Ozu’s
mature films - a record of slow, gradual metamorphosis of the Japanese society and family.
- the slow disintegration of family - the gradual decline of national identityMILD criticism or regret against social, economic and cultural changes and western influence.Subtle nostalgia - from distanced and dispassionate positions his films depict what Japan has lost or is losing.
Slide16Ozu’s Themes and Motifs
His films examine the struggles in the cycles of birth, growth, aging and death so essential to human beings;
Pains in the transition from childhood to adulthood;
*Small conflicts between the young and the old; *The tension between tradition and progressionUniversality of Ozu’s themes and motifs
Ozu’s
films very Japanese yet very universal.
Slide17So Japanese and So Universal
“If in our century, something sacred still existed, if there were something like a sacred treasure of the cinema, then for me that would have to be the work of the Japanese director,
Yasujiro
Ozu…
Slide18So Japanese and So Universal
For me never before and never again since has the cinema been so close to its essence and its purpose: to present an image of man in our
century, a usable, true and valid image in which he not only
recongnises himself, but from which, above all, he may learn about himself.”Wim Wenders, Film Director
Slide19So Japanese and So Universal
Admiration and accolades from film directors all over the world
Influence on a large number of people
Considered as one of the greatest film directors and auteurs in the 20th century because of his film contents and film stylesBritish Film Institute Sight and Sound Directors’ 10 Best Films of All Time 2012 Critics’ 10 Best Films of All Time
Slide20So Japanese and So Universal
Aki
Kaurismaki
, Finish film director tribute 1Hou Hsiao Hien, Taiwanese film director tribute 2
Slide21Ozu as
Auteur
Complete grip on filmmaking in every stage
Mr. Ozu looked happiest when he was engaged in writing a scenario with Mr. Kogo Noda, at the latter’s cottage on the tableland of Nagano Prefecture. By the time he finished writing a script, after about four months’ effort, he had already made up every image in every shot, so that he never changed the scenario after we went on the set. The words were so polished up that he would not allow us even a single mistake.
Slide22Ozu as
Auteur
The same crew -
Ozu gumi (Ozu team)Noda Kogo (scriptwriter) Atsuta
Yuharu
(photographer)
Slide23Ozu
as
Auteur
Hara Setsuko (1920 - ) Ozu’s favourite actressRyu Chishu (1904 - 1993) - Appears in most of Ozu’s films from The Only Son to An Autumn Afternoon
Slide24Ozu
as
Auteur
Other actors frequently appeared in Ozu’s filmsSugimura Haruko
and Yamamura So