David Hast: Scott, have you seen Tokyo Story?
Scott Vander Werf: I have not seen Tokyo Story. I know the director, Ozu, is considered one of the greatest Japanese directors, certainly from the early years of Japanese cinema up until his death.
DH: Yes, Yasujirō Ozu, O-Z-U, is one of the most critically acclaimed Japanese directors, but one that most Americans have not heard of and probably haven't even seen his films. When we think of Japanese cinema, we think of samurai films. Most people think of the films of Akira Kurosawa, the action director, or maybe they've seen the Godzilla films, all the monster films, or Japanese New Wave crime movies from the early 60s, and of course, there have been many wonderful Japanese films in the last 30, 40 years.
But Ozu, because his films weren't shown in the West, and also because they're domestic dramas, they're not action films at all, they were overlooked for a long time. They weren't even seen in the US and Europe until the late 50s, and that's near the end of Ozu's life. Ozu lived from 1903 to 1963. He made many, many silent films in Japan. And then switched over to sound late, 1936 by the time he made his first sound film. And then and all his films were in black and white until his first color film in 1958, and then he made color for the rest of his career.
But Ozu is completely different in so many ways. Most of his movies are about marriage, family life, and Japanese culture. Is that what you recall from what you know about Ozu? You've heard about him, right?
SVW: I've heard about Ozu and then I was in film school and we read about his framing, the way that he did framing the famous tatami camera shot where it was the level of a tatami mat which is what the Japanese would use to sit cross-legged on the floor. So that was famous. And then also the way that he frames things with framing within the frames and using objects or other people to frame what he's the camera is really looking at.
Dh: Yeah, so I mean this is what makes Ozu. Once you've seen an Ozu film, especially if you watch a few you'll realize nobody else's movies look like this and they're deceptively simple, right? The stories are all about, like “Tokyo story”, “Tokyo story” is regarded by many critics as one of the greatest movies ever made. And what's the plot? It's an elderly couple take the train to Tokyo to visit their two grown children and their grandchildren and their daughter-in-law who was married to their son who was killed, she's a widow now because their son was killed in the war. And that daughter-in-law treats them kindly, but their own children treat them terribly. And then they decide to go back to Tokyo disappointed.
And then other things happen, I won't do spoilers. But the movie, what's it about? I mean, it just shows, and it's basically about the sadness of everyday life and everyday moments, distances between people. Shame, his movies are very much about the inevitable change and how time changes everything. And he gives this incredibly deep insight, even his minor characters, people who have one or two lines. It reminds me of the great root screwball comedy director, Preston Sturgis. Someone's just on screen for a minute and they're interesting. You like know that character. And what's so amazing is that, how does he get you to do it, to feel like it's the way he does it? He has a totally different style.
SVW: Well, what I remember is a reading of the fact that like Kurosawa, who is known in the West earlier, was influenced by Western filmmaking. And whereas Ozu was trying to make a pure Japanese cinema.
DH: Yeah, it's... Yeah, he is not influenced by Western cinema. And so in some ways, you know, a cliche, but it has a point about Ozu is that he's the most Japanese of Japanese filmmakers.
SVW: And also didn't he strip away things as his career went along? He made things even simpler in his later films.
DH: So this is one of the amazing things about Ozu. Most directors as their careers go on, they try, they keep trying to do new things. New technology comes along, they can do a new effect, they can do a new kind of camera move. They can light differently. They can do different things with sound. Ozu kept stripping away the techniques of film, throwing out the ones that weren't useful to him and doing less and less. So here's some hallmarks of Ozu. He used exclusively a 50 millimeter lens. So a 50 millimeter lens in traditional film, 35 millimeter film, is the lens that most accurately shows the way the human eye sees. It's not telephoto, it's not zoomed in, it's not wide angle, it's kind of the human perspective. And he used a 50 millimeter lens for everything.
He rarely moved the camera, almost never. And as his career went on, he moved it less and less. I don't think I've ever seen a pan or a tilt. And he rarely tracks the camera. So what you see is locked down shots. Each one is like an individual photograph and they're meticulously composed. His composition is beautiful and always has a purpose. He never used dissolves or fade-ins or fade-outs as edits in order to show the passage of time or a change of location. He always just cuts from one thing to the next. He has these famous transitional shots between scenes very often. When he did dialogue, no over-the-shoulder shots. You would see a fixed shot on the two people sitting at a table or whatever, and then he goes to close-ups. And he doesn't overlap dialogue. Someone says their line from the beginning to the end, then cut to the other person. Never the kind of L-shaped edits back and forth for dialogue.
And the way they look at each other is strange. Often, when you look at shot reverse shot editing of dialogue in most movies, conventional way of doing it, virtually all movies, there's one character's looking left, screen left, the other's looking screen right, and their eye lines match because they're looking at each other. Ozu, the eye lines don't always match, and sometimes the characters seem to be looking straight into the camera, like they're looking at you, which is like, that violates all the rules of shooting. It's like never look into the camera, right? And all these things, they seem almost artificial, right? And yet, if you, oh, and then you mentioned the tatami shot. That's also very important that most of his shots are at the height of a Japanese person sitting on a tatami mat.
SVW: Even when the characters are standing or moving around.
DH: Not always, if two characters, if characters are moving around in the house, let's say, it will be at that level. But let's say two characters who are standing begin to talk to each other, once he cuts to the closeups, it'll be at their eye level. because they're standing, because he wants to fill the frame with their face and not be looking up or down at them. And you know what's amazing about this is it's incredibly carefully constructed. It's obviously he's he's an artist and a craftsman, but the net, the total effect of this, and this is why Ozu is genius, is it feels completely real. Like it feels like it's free of the artifice of most filmmaking. I don't know how it works that way, but it does.
SVW: And doesn't he also use nature, buildings, architecture, and also empty spaces within houses or buildings and use those to an effect as well?
DH: Yeah, he was very interested in things and the things that surround us, the places that surround us. So one of the ways that he goes between scenes, if there's a scene in one place and then there's a scene in another or at another time, is he will do a series of three or four shots of like exteriors, the buildings around where they are.
SVW: So why should I see Ozu?
DH: Because they're very moving movies. They're very, you will be drawn in, they're emotional, they feel like this person captures what it's like. I mean, his movies are about regular people and their families and their marriages and they're really beautiful. And at the same time, if you appreciate cinema, they're really interesting to look at.
