Ikite wa mita keredo - Ozu Yasujirô den (1983) was shown in the U.S. with the title, "I Lived, but . . ." (The Japanese title adds "Biography of Yasujiro Ozu.") The title is actually humorous, because several of Ozu's films had that type of title: "I Graduated, but . . . " or "I was Born, but . . . "
This full length documentary was written and directed by Kazuo Inoue.
The movie is a mixture of interviews with people who worked with Ozu and clips from Ozu's movies. One actor interviewed was Chishû Ryû, who appeared in 52 of Ozu's 54 films.
The American-born Japanese cinema expert Donald Richie gave his interview in Japanese, in which he was fluent.
Ozu was a genius, and every movie clip just drives home that point. However, he wasn't exactly an actor's dream director. He was a controlling director, who left no room for an actor's interpretation. Sometimes he did 40 or 50 takes of the same short scene before he was satisfied.
Whatever his method was, it worked. Ozu produced masterpiece after masterpiece. I consider him the greatest Japanese movie director of the 20th Century. (If not the greatest, then certainly in the same pantheon as Mizoguchi and Kurosawa.)
This is an excellent film to watch once you've seen some of Ozu's masterpieces--any of the Noriko trilogy, or Late Autumn.
This film was included as a special feature in the Criterion Collection edition of Tokyo Story. It's really a great bonus. The movie has a solid 7.5 IMDb rating. I thought it was even better than that, and rated it 9.
