April 24, 2015

The Edge of Regret

20 minutes

In the second installment of our ongoing series on the films and career of Yasujiro Ozu, we blaze through his first eight films (seven of which are competely lost) as we watch a Japanese slacker who loves American movies find his voice.

Part 2 in Ozu Seasons, an ongoing series

Films Covered

Sword of Penitence (1927)

The Dreams of Youth (1928)

Wife Lost (1928)

Pumpkin (1928)

A Couple on the Move (1928)

Body Beautiful (1928)

Treasure Mountain (1928)

Days of Youth (1929), the only surviving film of the bunch

Ozu Collaborator 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

actor, Ozu's trademark actor, over even Setsuko Hara

Show Notes and Links

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 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 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

We enter one of the most diverse phases of Ozu's early filmography, covering college comedies (and dramedies), crime films, and melodramas, along with yet more Ozu films that have been completely lost.

...more

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