Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu (The Only Son / There Was a Father) (The Criterion Collection)
by Yasujiro Ozu
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DVD details
Actor: Chishu RyuDirector: Yasujiro Ozu
Brand: IMG
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Japanese (Original Language)
Format: Black & White, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 169 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2010-07-13
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: IMAGE ENTERTAINMENT
DVD Reviews of Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu (The Only Son / There Was a Father) (The Criterion Collection)
DVD Review: Two more from one of the masters of Japanese cinema
Summary: 5 Stars
A widowed high school teacher named Horikawa (Chishu Ryu) experiences a There Was a Fathertraumatic episode during a school field trip and consequently, decides to abandon his profession and move to a small town where his son, Ryohei may obtain a good education. However, unable to earn enough money to pay for Ryohei's boarding school, Horikawa decides to return to Tokyo to find a better paying job. The separation between father and son would prove to be permanent and irreversible, as Ryohei completes his studies and becomes a schoolteacher in a rural province while his father continues to work in Tokyo. The film is a more sentimentally subdued - but nevertheless, affecting - quintessential Ozu home drama on parental obligation and the inevitable dissolution of family. At this juncture, Ozu's camera is more static and understated (similar to Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family), such as the repeated extended sequence of father and son fishing in synchrony at a lake: first, when Ryohei was a young boy, then later, as a grown man vacationing with his father at a resort.
The Only Son is a quintessential Ozu home drama on the relationship between a widowed mother (Choko Iida) and her son, Ryosuke. Encouraged by her son's ambitious elementary school teacher (Chishu Ryu), the mother slaves at a silk manufacturing factory, sacrificing personal and financial comfort and security, in order to support Ryosuke's education so that he may grow up to be a "great man". Thirteen years later, she travels to Tokyo to visit Ryosuke and finds that that his once seemingly bright future has become quashed by limited opportunity and personal obligations. Alternately poignant, comical, and bittersweet, the film is a thoughtful exposition of Ozu's familiar themes of familiar estrangement and acceptance of life's inevitable disappointments.
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Description of Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu (The Only Son / There Was a Father) (The Criterion Collection)
These rare early films from Yasujiro Ozu (Tokyo Story, An Autumn Afternoon) are considered by many to be two of the Japanese director?s finest works, paving the way for a career among the most sensitive and significant in film history. The Only Son and There Was a Father make a graceful pair, bookending a crucial period in Japanese history. In the former, Ozu?s first sound film, made during a time of intense economic crisis, a mother sacrifices her own happiness for her son?s education; the latter, released in the midst of World War II, stars Ozu stalwart Chishu Ryu (Late Spring, Tokyo Story) as a widowed schoolteacher trying to raise a son despite financial hardship. Criterion proudly presents these nearly lost treasures for the first time on home video.Master of the domestic drama, Yasujirô Ozu honors selfless parents in this harmonious pair (both even feature similar shots of women with bundles on their backs). In 1936's The Only Son, his first sound feature, Tsune (Chôko Iida, very affecting) scrimps and saves to provide 15-year-old Ryosuke with a proper education. Twelve years later, the widow visits him in Tokyo, the same path his instructor, Mr. Okubo (Ozu favorite Chishû Ryû), once traveled, but Ryosuke (Shinichi Himori) neglected to tell her about his wife, child, and low-paying night-school job. Her disappointment melts as he proves his mettle during a family crisis. As film scholar David Bordwell notes, it's "a somber story" compared to Ozu's silent comedies.
In 1942's semi-autobiographical There Was a Father, Ryû returns as a widower with a 12-year-old son. (While the father in The Only Son barely rates a mention, Shuhei speaks about his late wife as if she were still alive.) After a class trip goes awry, he trades teaching for factory work and sends Ryohei off to boarding school. Thirteen years later, the father has advanced to an office job and the son has become a teacher, but Ryohei (Shûji Sano) regrets the time they lost even as he respects Shuhei's choices. While this World War II-era film works best on a personal level, the father's sacrifice also reflects a citizen's duty to his country.
If the quality of these prints isn't ideal, the imperfections fail to detract from the timelessness of the stories. The set comes complete with notes from Tony Rayns and Donald Richie, and interviews with Kristin Thompson, who looks at the films as precursors for Ozu's postwar classics, and Tadao Sato, who puts The Only Son into a historical context, concluding that this deceptively simple work "never fails to move me." --Kathleen C. Fennessy
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