
by Allan Fish
(Japan 1953 135m) DVD1/2
Aka. Tokyo Monogatari
Isn’t life disappointing?
p Takeshi Yamamoto d Yasujiro Ozu w Yasujiro Ozu, Hogo Noda ph Yuharu Atsuta ed Yoshiyasu Hamamura m Kojun Saito art Tatsuo Hamada
Chishu Ryu (Shukishi Hirayama), Chieko Higashiyama (Tomi Hirayama), Setsuko Hara (Noriko), Haruko Sugimura (Shige Kaneko), Nobuo Nakamura (Kurazo Kaneko), So Yamamura (Koichi), Kuniko Miyaki, Eijiro Tono, Kyoko Kagawa, Shiro Osaka,
Indeed. That quote sounds more like something out of a Mike Leigh drama; one can imagine it issuing from the mouth of a Timothy Spall or a Lesley Manville with ease, yet it’s from Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story. Ozu’s masterpiece is a film not only about migration to the city, but about man’s inherent neglect of our parents in old age. It was also a thoroughly refreshing No 1 in John Walker’s “Halliwell’s Top 1,000.”
Shukishi and Tomi are an elderly couple living in a small Japanese coastal town whose children have, with the exception of a daughter who works as a schoolteacher, gone to the big city, one of whom was killed in military service. When they go to see their children and grand-children in the big city they are treated, if not coldly, then as an embarrassment, to be entertained, ushered away and kept from view. (more…)
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