Arte celebrates Ozu in 10 must-see films
The Japanese Yasujiro Ozu (1903 – 1963) remains for many film fans the greatest of all. It’s time to form your own opinion, thanks to this free retrospective.
During the last Lyon Lumière Festival, we discovered rare films by Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu: Owner’s story, The Munakata sisters… The observation was clear: the power of this cinema continues to jump out at us like a constantly renewed apparition. An almost mystical apparition where the purity and grace of the staging leave no room for any excess or lack of taste. What is fascinating, in fact, about this behind-closed-doors filmmaker, who we are celebrating this year – either the sixty years of his death or the one hundred and twenty years of his birth – is this certainty that here, cinema expresses itself in its most perfect fullness. Although, beneath their hushed, modest, even light aspects, Ozu’s films exude the dull tension of a Japanese society in perpetual reprieve. And we should not allow ourselves to be softened (put to sleep?) by the titles of his films whose pictorial poetry hides a secret harshness: Equinox flowers, late spring, Late autumn, Good morningor The taste of sake…
Transformations
Ozu is the quintessential Japanese family filmmaker. The one who, marked by the clashes of the Second World War, had to learn to deal with the American occupier, accept the decline of an old world and the appearance of a new one… All the films tell the story of the transformation of ‘a culture that some seek to preserve at all costs, where others prefer to venture into the unknown… Ozu does not decide. He seeks the truth behind each of the protagonists who populate this work of flawless intellectual coherence.
Style accuracy
Ozu’s films are characterized by their unchanging stylistic precision: fixed shot, strict geometry, lens at tatami height, close horizon… The protagonists filmed frontally seem to look the spectator in the white of the eyes and oblige him ” to take sides. “, as formulated in the short and very informative documentary which accompanies the selection of ten feature films, proposed by Arte.tv : Yasujiro Ozu, the filmmaker of happiness. This portrait, with an analysis as fine as it is clear, opens with this magnificent statement from the filmmaker: “ The camera field is only a small window on the world. Love is just a small window into life. You have to think twice before pressing the shutter button. » Here is a summary of the morals of a filmmaker who has always preferred restraint and purity to a vulgar exaltation of feelings.
Divide between generations
In the rich selection that Arte.tv offers in restored copies, don’t miss the classic Travel to Tokyo (1953), the story of an elderly couple who leave their province to visit their children in the capital. More than a divide between generations that needs to be repaired, Ozu films here a gap that blocks the emergence of feelings. We prefer to warn you, the epilogue is heartbreaking.
In a more mischievous register, comedy Good morning (1959), shows how the emergence of new consumer objects (televisions, household appliances, etc.) disrupts the domestic life of a middle class divided between fascination and panic fear of seeing their bearings fade away.
In addition to this retrospective on Arte.TV, Ozu is currently enjoying a theatrical retrospective which includes: Women and thugs, He was a father, Owner’s story And Last whim… The publisher Carlotta also offers a biographical work: Ozu, offscreen by Térui Yasuo.
