Tokyo Chorus (Ozu, 1931): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 4pm
This 35mm presentation, also screening on September 2nd, is part of the Yasujirō Ozu season at BFI Southbank. Full details here.
Chicago Reader review:
One of the cinema’s supreme humanists and ironists, Japanese director
Yasujiro Ozu started his lengthy filmmaking career in 1927. After a
remarkably prolific jack-of-all-trades apprenticeship, he eased into
directing a series of silent shomin-geki–dramas of humor and pathos in
lower-middle-class life–a specialty of his studio and a popular genre in
depression-devastated Japan. With each film in the series–from Days of
Youth (1929) to What Did the Lady Forget? (1937)–Ozu experimented with
narrative, camera angles, and editing; along the way he recruited a core
of creative personnel who became frequent collaborators. Twelve of
those silent features, some of which were recently discovered in studio
and museum archives, form a touring retrospective (now at Facets) that
sheds light on Ozu’s formative years (his best period, according to
critics like Noel Burch). The 1931 Tokyo Chorus is considered pivotal in
the evolution of his aesthetics. Its bare-bones plot–concocted by Ozu’s
longtime partner Kogo Noda–concerns the bittersweet tribulations of a
young white-collar family coping with unemployment. Ostensibly a comedy,
the film hinges on a succession of gags interspersed with moments of
disillusionment and thwarted expectations. Its theme of parent-child
conflict, the institutional settings of office and school, the low-angle
frontal shots, and the cutaways to enigmatic still lifes mark Tokyo
Chorus as a blueprint for the masterpieces to come.
Ted Shen
Here (and above) is an extract.
No comments:
Post a Comment