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Lesser, but, of course, still fine Ozu. It might come off as better if it had not been edited by American censors after the war, or if the existing print were a little less damaged (it's easily the worst print I've ever seen Criterion put on DVD, and they apologize profusely in the booklet for it; of course, it's of the best quality that is available). Chishu Ryu, in his first starring role, plays the titular father. The film opens with him quitting his job as a teacher after a student under his supervision has died. A widower, he moves away from the city with his young son in tow. After he finds a good school, he abandons his son to move back to Tokyo, where he can find better work. The meat of the film is the torn relationship. The son isn't bitter, exactly - more hurt that his father is far away. When he grows up, he wants to quit his job as a teacher to move to Tokyo to be with his father, but his father refuses the idea. Every person must do their job the best they can. While the message of every citizen doing their duty is a part of the film's wartime propaganda, it doesn't really come off as such. It feels more like Ryu is always punishing himself for his own career failures, or maybe that he fears that his son will be a failure like himself if he quits his job. Yet Ryu's character never comes off as cold - he loves his son, and his son loves the heck out of him. It's as if the forced separation is pathological. All the scenes between the father and son are golden. I did think that whenever the film strayed from them it wasn't as strong, and the pacing feels a little weird at times (almost certainly from the editing the film suffered later on). The final moments are killer.

In this Japanese drama from Shochiku and director Yasujiro Ozu, Mr. Horikawa (Chishu Ryu) is a respected school teacher who is raising his young son Ryohei (Haruhiko Tsuda) alone, after the death of Horikawa's wife. A tragedy causes Horikawa to resign his position and move to the country. As his son grows and needs better schooling, Horikawa makes the difficult decision to move to the city for better paying work. The father and son then spend the next decade or more barely seeing one another, as the grown son (Shuji Sano) attends university and then begins work in another city.

This was made under the strictest conditions during wartime, when all films were required to have some element of propaganda that helped the war effort. Ozu gets by with having the father's sacrifice for his son's greater good work as a lesson to the Japanese populace to sacrifice for their country. It's there if you want to see it, but one could just as easily watch the film and not notice any propaganda. Ryu is terrific in his subdued way, his gently smiling man of simple virtue a living embodiment of the Ozu cinematic aesthetic.

I was struck with how often Ozu uses shots of large, foreboding architecture, such as artless multi-story office buildings or smokestacks or harsh concrete bridge pilings, and juxtaposes these images with scenes of common familial love and warmth, as if to say that family life is the one antidote to the cold modern world. Ozu's movies aren't for everyone, and I would completely understand people finding them boring and pointless. But to me their Zen, regimented tranquility and deceptive simplicity are among the finest in world cinema. Recommended.

Another sober wartime drama, this time a sort of reworking of THE ONLY SON as a widower schoolteacher decides to send his boy to a boarding school to give him the best education possible and seek a higher paying position to afford tuition. The film takes a sudden leap forward in time as the grown son desires to take care of his aging father, but the father forbids the son to compromise his own career. The war is barely mentioned but the film can easily be read as a propagandistic statement about self-sacrifice and devotion to duty, even at the cost of family unity. However, the pensive, tentative mood Ozu captures at the end, embodied in the son's distant, troubled look as he thinks about his father, hints at Ozu's own reservations with the moral message being issued. The scenes of father and son together in both halves of the story have a gentle perfection that gives the film all the beauty it requires, thanks to great performances by Shuji Sano as the grown son and Chishyu Ryo as the father. Amazingly, Ryu was only 38 when he gave this totally believable performance as an aging patriarch -- in fact he barely looks any different than he does in AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON twenty years later!

Most of the films of Yasujiro Ozu take a very restricted time period: a few days at the most. "There Was a Father" is unusual in that the time span is actually quite long: it stretches over a number of years (this is also the case with "The Only Son"), as it chronicles the relationship of a widower with his son. The father, a schoolteacher (played by Chishu Ryu), struggles to make sure that his son has advantages that he never had; in this case, the son is appreciative of all that the father has done, and the relationship is one of the most heartwarming of all familial relationships in Ozu's work. "There Was a Father" represents one of the most beautiful depictions of a good parent in all of world cinema.

Another simple story perfectly made and portrayed by Ozu. This time it is about the relationship between father and son and how they had to separate from each other throughout their lives.

I think this has been the slowest paced film from his earlier films I've seen so far, though I'm not really sure. The camera sometimes shows or focuses on places (for instance the shot in the building where the father works) and prolongs itself into them. Those takes might not add anything to the plot, but they surely give a more vivid feel to the film.

The film is really worth watching for all lovers of Japanese cinema; it is also the one I've liked the most from Ozu's earlier films. Needless to say, and as I've been mentioning in the other reviews, if you're not into Ozu's filmmaking style, then you shouldn't bother checking this out.

Directed by Yasujirô Ozu Written by Yasujirô Ozu Takao Yanai & Tadao Ikeda Starring: Chishû Ryû, Shûji Sano, Takeshi Sakamoto, Haruhiko Tsuda & Mitsuko Mito

Japanese culture has always been in my interest, and watching old Japanese movies has been a thing I have done for some time now. I started of course with some of Akita Kurosawa's classic samurai-films from the 50's and 60's., in which I mostly enjoyed. Some time ago I stumbled onto director Yasujirô Ozu. I only knew him for his 1954 film, "Tokyo Story". I did some research and found a copy of "There Was a Father" (Original Title "Chchi Ariki"), and watched it a Sunday evening. I could not make up my mind if i thought this movie was some total garbage, or if it was a pure masterpiece / it's either. But one thing is for sure, it stayed on my mind for hours. I came to the conclusion, that I actually really enjoyed it. The film centers around a father, played by Chishû Ryû, and his son, played by Haruhiko Tsuda (and Shûji Sano), and focues on their relationship in a 25-year timetable. There are a few issues with the pace of the film. I'm sure many viewers will consider it boring, because most of the film is just them having a conversation about life and other subjects of matter which all end up being boring. But if you really give it the time to tell the story, it is actually kind of exiting and intriguing to watch and listen to. The film just seems more natural because of the every-day life conversations which they're having. Of course the movie dates back to the middle of WWII, in which Japan was a big part of, but this innocent picture, hides it away for a while, and just pays attention on some of the things that goes on in the familys. On a techinal level, the film is very beautiful shot. Cinematographer, Yûharu Atsuta and director, Yasujirô Ozu takes some wise decisions by having the camera just observe what's happening in the film. It fits the tone very well, and give the viewer time to think about the things the characters disguss in the film. Though, the sound in the film wasn't quiet as good as they are now-days, mostly because this is a more than 70-year old movie. However, it didn't ruin the film. It was easy to ignore.

Though, I would have found the film a bit not my type of film, I really enjoyed watching it. It felt real. It felt like i was there, back in the twentieth century just making observations of the lives of a father and his son. I look very much forward to see more of Yasujirô Ozu work. I am very impressed by this man, even though it's the first film of his I've seen.

I give "There was a Father" 3.5 / 5 stars

Being a fan of Ozu, you see here all the elements of his film making: The long shots, the trains, the interaction of family members etc. Kind of a precursor to the superior "Late Spring", this story revolves around a father and son's relationship. He works hard to get his son through school, so he can have a better life. However, they are not in the same place, so they do not see each other all that often. The film spans several years, in which the son goes from a young boy to a man. Chishu Ryu, who has starred in many Ozu films, is the father. Of course, he is great, he always is. Since the mother passed before the film even started, the boy only has the father, and their relationship is the heart of this film. A good to almost very good film, it was shown, appropriately enough, on Fathers Day on Turner Classic Movies. If you like Ozu, you'll want to see this. If you're new to him, check out the films with Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara, as well as his swan song "Autumn Afternoon" and even "I Was Born, But" before watching this. I liked it, it was a nice film. Its another worthy Ozu film, in a career that had so many of them.

The age of the main characters of Ozu evolves with his own age. His first real success is about two little boys in "I was born ... but" (1932) and after the Second World War his most well known films are mostly about elderly people looking back on their lives (and sometimes worrying about an unmarried child).

Following this logic his films in midcareer should be about adult people. For "The only son" (1936) and "There was a father" (1942), released together in a box set by Criterion, this is on average true. In the first half of these films we have a young boy and an adult parent, in the second half we have an adult son and an aging parent.

More essential is however that "The only son" is about the mother - son relationship and "There was father"about" about the father - son relationship.

Of these two movies "There was a father" is the inferior one because in effect it is war propaganda. The Japanese way of making war propaganda is very different from the Western way and therefore the Western spectator shall not recognise it at first glance , but it is war propaganda all the same. The movie does not mention the ongoing Second World War at all, but in conversations with his son the father (played by Ozu's preferred choice Chishu Ryu) again and again stresses the importance of things like sense of duty and self sacrifice.

In 1942 Ozu had in all probability little choice but making a film to the taste of the military leadership. The low rating is therefore not a reproach but a simple comparison with his other (better) films. An Ozu film remains an Ozu film all the same and within this disappointing movie there are still beautiful scenes. To begin with there are two fishing scenes with the father and his young (first scene) and grown up (second scene) son. Between these scenes father and son are mostly seperated by the duties of work and education. The two scenes sort of stand for the continuity in their relationship. In the first scene the fishing rods of father and son move in synchronisity until the father tells his son that he has to go to boarding school. The abrupt ending of the synchronisity accentuates the impact of this message on the son.

In in between scenes Ozu always liked images of trains. In this film, where the spatial seperation of father and son plays an important role, these images of trains are also a metaphor for space and distance.

One more step in Ozu's long journey of trying to balance between a cinematic eye that sees with clarity into the disasters of dramatic life and reflections of that eye, his most famous films still ahead of him. French and Soviet silent filmmakers innovated in the 20's by looking to see the seeing eye in action, shaping, morphing world with vision. Ozu introduced something altogether different: non-mind, nothingness between eye and world.

This was a completely novel thing at the time in terms of cinema - although it's supported by a rich Buddhist tradition.

Even Ozu seemed unsure how to handle it. Cultivating this took him time. It is possible for example, that being a young Japanese cinephile fascinated with modern Western culture, he thought for a time that he was only reworking Chaplin, a visual story, pared down to essentials. He dabbled for a time with a fluid camera, after Sternberg. He did a chamber drama, controlled, stagebound environment, very German.

But at some point, he must have suspected this had potential to go much deeper than anyone had envisioned at the time. I believe the key transition was Dragnet Girl from '33: a gangster film, very upbeat and jazzy, pure Sternberg razzle-dazzle, that is until the finale, where the modern movie night of danger and intrigue gave way to the clarity and stillness of the first morning light.

This was great. He had discovered the eye, a landscape painter's eye, but not yet the right landscape. He spent the next couple of films looking. It should be life, he knew this much, but what kind of life?

Now this. The story is about a teacher scarred by an accident he couldn't prevent, and efforts of his surrounding world to extricate him from the exile of self-imposed guilt. He sends his son away, to study, work hard and advance himself. He keeps himself away, somewhere in Tokyo, and only periodically surfaces back from we presume a frugal existence. At a class reunion with his former pupils, he is reminded, urged to consider, that the world is moving ahead, still turning. All his pupils are grown men, married, most of them with kids.

So what a change from earlier fathers Ozu portrayed, often itinerant bums, a source of dismay or embarrassment for their kids. Here's a father who is hardened, by his own failures no less, resolute, preaching to his son that "work should be considered every man's mission" and to "serve your country".

There is of course the obvious comment to be made about wartime allegory and the call for patriotic action, by itself not very interesting. Sons of Japan urged forward by a strict but well-meaning father. Incidentally, that same year was when tides of war started turning in the Pacific, blowing back towards Tokyo and destruction.

But there is more here, for the first time. Now if we only listen to the story, the father is a tragic hero and a model to emulate. The dutiful son goes away in the finale, presumably to strive to fulfil his father's wishes. The parting image is one of many poignantly still shots.

So far Ozu had favored dramatic resolution of that stillness - Floating Weeds, Tokyo Inn - and at first glance this is no different. But these images reveal a more complicated world beneath the story.

Consider the plot again. The traumatizing event occurs because the father is not there to see. This is understandable; we cannot keep the whole world in check. It turns independent of us, transient, impermanent flow. The event also happens away from our sight, but in place of it we have a perspective the father lacks. At the crucial moment, Ozu cuts away to a shot of an ornamental stone top on a vertical post of a bridge. Now images of bridges feature prominently in Japanese iconography, signifiers among other things of what the Buddhist understand as the floating world. Distances in old Japan were traditionally measured from the great Nihonbashi bridge, the center of a symbolic axis mundi.

There is no motion from this point of stillness in our film, although we know a plot is being set in motion in the flow of transient waters below, a life being lost.

How does the father handle this? Distraught from the tragedy, he takes off with his son on a train. Not having made his peace with the fact, he later removes himself from sight of his son, who needs him more than anything else. And how does the son? He becomes the father he's been effectively deprived of, this broken man infused with values from that loss. In the finale he sails off into the night, onboard another train.

Trains; man-made, mechanical structures of life, human karmas in motion.

On the other hand, an immovable spot above the waters, clarity, dispassion, centered vision.

This great film in the Japanese neorealism period is every bit as good as the best Italian neorealism films of the late 40s and early 50s. The Italian films are generally considered to be the best of that genre, but There Was a Father and films like Tokyo Story, a film about growing old in Japan and having your family leave you, are classics that have never been equalled in over 60 years. The secrets to these films are that they tell a simple story with simple techniques. There are no special effects, terrific chases, action sequences, or great suspense. Life is not like those things. These films are. Give yourself a treat and watch both of them.

Slow-moving tale of a father's relation to his son. After a pupil accidentally dies on an excursion, a teacher (Chishu Ryu) retires from services and starts working second rate jobs to provide for his son's education. The movie jumps many years to show the relation of the father and son as the son has come adult. It is a film about sacrifice and duty. The two main characters must live a life apart, given that the son has so fulfill his studying duties and the father is working elsewhere. There are some heartthrob scenes with the small boy and a gentle Ozu melancholy throughout, but I find it not to have very much going for it in terms of theme display or drama compared to other Ozu I have seen, with basically just the two characters. Still, effective film-making on very simple premises. Excellent score – I thought the composer must have been Ozu regular, but was not.

A touching film directed by Ozu in 1942 that tells the story of how a man, widowed, searches with all his commitment to raise and best educate his only son. Over the course of about twenty years we witness the changes of this relationship, the sacrifices of the father who tries to inculcate in his son real values of life such as commitment, sacrifice, constancy, work, duty.

There was a father is the most dated Ozu film I have seen but in my opinion many of the elements of his cinema and his direction are present. Ozu is for me exceptional in how he manages to express and represent deep feelings of life with simplicity, in a direct way that strikes the viewer.

Unfortunately, the edition of the Criterion Collection I saw was not the best, both from an audio and video point of view. Deep film, of good feelings, where Ozu's class is unquestionably present.

This is a very good example of Ozu's quiet power. It's a very simple story with a very small cast of characters. There's hardly any emotion shown. And yet, the small movements of plot end up creating this wonderful well of emotion by the end. Sparsely told with little adornment, There Was a Father is a sneaky little emotional gut punch.

Shuhei (Chishu Ryu) is a widower with a son, Ryohei (Haruhiko Tsuda as a child and Shuji Sano as an adult). He teaches math to high schoolers and decides to give up his decently paid job when, on a school trip, some students are killed when their boat overturns in a lake. He takes Ryohei to a remote village where he fixes doors for what little money he can get until he realizes he's simply not making enough for Ryohei's future. So, he takes a job in Tokyo to fund Ryohei's education in the remote district from afar. More than ten years pass. Ryohei graduates and becomes a teacher himself, and the two begin to try and reconnect.

They'd never fallen out, or anything, but the physical distance between father and son over the course of the son's formative years has created an emotional distance that both wish to bridge.

And the bulk of the film is them trying to bridge that gulf, learning who each other is over the course of a week. There are highs, and there are lows. All of the emotions are held in reserve, as was Ozu's wont, and it creates this undergirding of specific detail that, even though told in these reserved tones, will come to fruition as the film reaches its final moments.

This is also the moment where Ozu seems to have completely and totally dedicated himself to his style. Almost every shot is told from that angle from the ground like we're sitting in the room with the characters. Shots last for a long time as Ozu lets his characters inhabit their surroundings like they belong there. He still does cross-cutting from time to time in dialogue sequences, something he relied on fairly heavily in his silent period, but they're used effectively when he does resort to them.

The emotional power ends up sneaky because of this extremely reserved approach to visual storytelling. He's using very few tricks to pull of the emotion, relying on his writing and performances. And those performances are important. Ozu is preventing his actors from using melodramatic tricks to inform the audiences what they should be feeling. He's operating on a much more subtle plane where emotion is withheld until actual emotional moments.

So, there's a moment where Shuhei admonishes Ryohei because Ryohei has decided that he's going to quit his own teaching job (in chemistry) and move to where Shuhei lives. Shuhei gives an impassioned little speech, in only the smallest of heightened tones, that one is to be dedicated to one's job, no matter what it is. I know that the film got cut down slightly by Imperial censors, but this feels like one of only two moments in Ozu's filmography that has edged into propaganda. Dedicate yourself to your job! It's just what good men do! But, anyway, it's this admonition between father and son that provides depth to the relationship. It's not happy all the time. It provides this wrinkle to the relationship that gives it a stronger feeling of reality. And, the performances help. Shuhei doesn't scream. He simply speaks sternly while Ryohei looks down in shame.

So when the film moves into its final act, a sudden change in the state of things that enters into tragedy where emotion does end up running high, Ozu still approaches the material in the understated way. It's where long looks gain this great emotional power as people reflect on what's happening, what's being lost, and how things can never be the same again.

Ozu was...really good at this.

I suppose that if I have to explain my less than perfect score on the film, it has to do with Shuhei's life as a teacher. It comes back later in the film with him visiting with a former colleague and some students, but it was so long before that I don't think it quite connects. It has everything to do thematically with what's going on, Shuhei reflecting on his regrets for having done what was best for his child, seeing a glimpse of what he lost, but I think Ozu was going for an emotional connection here that I didn't quite feel. That's it.

Still, this is very good work from Ozu, proving very quickly that he's a master of the sound era without any flash or showmanship. He's assured and confident in his stylistic approaches, and he makes it work with the stories he's choosing to tell.

The son and father go fishing when he was young they were rather good together, but rather less when the boy is told he was going to have to go to a dormitory school and not see his dad so often. Later on as a man he was fishing again with his older father and it was wonderful again. Really? All the film is quite sad that the boy has to learn dignity and 'don't cry' and is all this really good? Also I'm not really sure if this is the film Ozu wanted to make, we will never know but it was during the war and there must have been the censors at it. Certainly the scene towards the end and the long class reunion features patriotic, morale boosting rhetoric and singing. I'm sure some of the Japanese still like all this but much of it must have disappeared after the war. I really didn't like this one, I didn't like the tone and for some reason I knew that the DVD was poor and now even with the BFI Blu-ray it is still terrible.