Tôkyô boshoku (1957)

Director:

Yasujiro Ozu

Writers:

Kôgo Noda (writer)
Yasujiro Ozu (writer)

Release Date:

19 July 1972 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot take the truth of being abandoned as a child.

Plot Keywords:

Place Name In Title | Pregnancy | Family Relationships | Daughter | Tokyo Japan

Cast

Ineko Arima	...	Akiko Sugiyama
Kamatari Fujiwara	...	Noodle vendor
Setsuko Hara	...	Takako Numata
Nobuo Nakamura	...	Sakae Aiba
Chishû Ryû	...	Shukichi Sugiyama
Kinzô Shin	...	Yasuo Numata
Haruko Sugimura	...	Shigeko Takeuchi
Teiji Takahashi	...	Noburo Kawaguchi
Masami Taura	...	Kenji Kimura
Isuzu Yamada	...	Kisako Soma
Sô Yamamura	...	Seki Sekiguchi

Also Known As:

Tokyo Twilight
Twilight in Tokyo

Runtime:

140 min

Country:

Japan

Language:

Japanese

Color:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

UK:PG (2007)

Company:

Shôchiku Eiga

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Ikite wa mita keredo - Ozu Yasujirô den (1983)

Ozu's darkest hour, a masterpiece

A deeply, uncharacteristically dark film, even among other "dark" Ozu films (i.e. A HEN IN THE WIND, EARLY SPRING) that may require a theatrical setting for the viewer to be fully absorbed in the strange, dark textures of the world Ozu presents. I myself was pretty alienated for the first 1/2 hour or so until the wintry chill of the mise-en-scene (brilliantly suggested in the slightly hunched-over postures of the characters) found its way into me instead of keeping me at arm's length. And from there this story builds in unwavering intensity as it follows a family on a slow slide into dissolution: a passive, judgmental patriarch (played by Chisyu Ryu, subverting his gently accepting persona in a way that is shocking), his elder daughter, a divorcee with a single child (Setsuko Hara, playing brilliantly against type -- who'd have thought the sweetest lady in '50s Japan had such an evil scowl?), and his younger daughter (Ineko Arima, a revelation), secretly pregnant and searching for her boyfriend, get a major shakeup when their absent mother, who the father had told them was long dead, re-enters their lives. Ozu's vision of post-war Japan and how the sins of one generation get passed on to the next, illustrated brilliantly by a series of parallels drawn sensitively between characters, manages to be both compassionate and scathing -- even a seemingly cop-out happy denouement is embedded with a poison pill. A masterpiece, without question, one that throws all of Ozu's depictions of modern society in a beautifully devastating new light.