April 16, 2015

Ozu Seasons

11 minutes

Roger Ebert's voice introduces us to a new, "seasonal" (in more than one sense) series focusing on Yasujiro Ozu.

Part 1 in Ozu Seasons, an ongoing series

Show Notes and Links

Roger Ebert's commentary track (briefly excerpted here) can be heard in full on Criterion's release of Floating Weeds (1959), a remake of A Story of Floating Weeds (1934). Our excerpt was taken from the same opening minutes found in Criterion's tribute post to Ebert, published just after his passing.

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 Plus 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 next week's Eclipse 42: Silent Ozu - Three Crime Dramas, which I may have blogged my way into predicting a few years ago, during my most just-previous pass at covering Ozu.

Next time, we start digging into the early-career films you would never expect from a director known for mature, calm, and considered family dramas: slapstick college comedies, a samurai movie he didn't finish directing, crime melodramas, and more.

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