March 22, 2020

From Graduating to Flunking

33 minutes

In the third installment of our ongoing series on the films and career of Yasujiro Ozu, we find a filmmaker in transition, with Ozu finding elements of his voice and themes that will persist over the following three decades.

Part 3 in Ozu Seasons, an ongoing series

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Films Covered

9: Fighting Friends: Japanese Style (1929)

10: I Graduated, But... (1929)

11: The Life of an Office Worker (1929)

12: The Knock-Down Kid (aka "A Straightforward Boy") (1929)

13: An Introduction to Marriage (1930)

14: Walk Cheerfully (1930)

15: I Flunked, But... (1930)

Names Worth Learning

Kogo Noda

screenwriter

Tatsuo Saito

actor, prominent in the silent period

Choko Iida

actress who graduates from bit mom/maid parts to break-your-heart leads

Takeshi Sakamoto

actor, goes on to play "Ozu's tramp" Kihachi

Chishu Ryu

Ozu's trademark actor collaborator

Kinuyo Tanaka

begins as an ingénue actress, becomes an important part of Japanese cinema history

Show Notes and Links

Criterion Collected now has a dedicated Twitter account that will not only update and communicate about the show specifically, but also occasional bits of Criterion ephemera.

Surviving footage from Fighting Friends: Japanese Style

Surviving footage from "Tokkan kozo" (The Knock-Down Kid)

Ozu-san deserves credit for being one of the longest-running sources of good Ozu info on the web for some time.

David Bordwell's indispensible Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema is available for free as a PDF by following a link on his website.

The vast majority of Ozu's surviving filmography is available to U.S. listeners on Criterion's Hulu channel (there's a 2008 movie mistakenly listed in the last row, ignore it).

A current listing of Ozu's films available from Criterion, on disc and otherwise via iTunes or Hulu Plus, including the trio that make up this week's Eclipse 42: Silent Ozu - Three Crime Dramas, all of which will be covered in the coming weeks.

NEXT IN "OZU SEASONS" ON CRITERION COLLECTED

A look across the career of one of Ozu's most frequent collaborators during this period, actor Tatsuo Saito.

NEXT ON CRITERION COLLECTED

Some extras and bonus material in tribute to Janus Films co-founder William Becker. His is a name that any Criterion fan should know from the credits of every supplement and collectible booklet in the Collection.

...more

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