Memorias de un inquilino

Record of a Tenement Gentleman by Yasujiro Ozu is a heartwarming story of the power of love to heal the hardest heart. In this case the heart belongs to Tane (Shoko Lida), a stern and unforgiving middle-aged widow whose life is turned upside down when a taciturn little boy is brought to her home by a fortuneteller, Tashiro (Chishu Ryu). The boy, Kohei (Hohi Aoki) was lost or abandoned in Chigasaki and followed Tashiro all the way home. After Kohei wets his bed, Tane scolds him in a gruff manner and tries to pass him off to her neighbors but nobody seems to want to care for him.

Tane takes the boy back to Chigasaki to look for his father (Eitaro Ozawa) but learns that he has left for Tokyo. She returns home and reluctantly agrees to take care of the child a while longer. Shoko Lida beautifully recreates Tane's character showing her to be both tough and tender, her hangdog facial expression indicating that perhaps she is more burdened down by life than cold and rejecting. When the frightened boy runs away after being scolded one more time, Tane realizes that she has begun to have affection for him. Tane and Tashiro now belatedly discover how can children contribute to the quality of life and both develop a new understanding and compassion for the condition of children in postwar Japan. Record of a Tenement Gentleman is another small masterpiece from Ozu.

A beautiful little film by Ozu, only 72 minutes long, about a young boy who was apparently abandoned by his father. He shacks up with Tané (exquisitely played by Choko Iida) for the first night, but when she can't find his father, he becomes a permanent fixture in her household. At first, she's bitter and mean about it. A middle-age widow, she believes, shouldn't have to deal with snotty-nosed bedwetters. But eventually her resolve weakens and she finds that she has missed a lot by never having had a child. The plotline is predictable and a little cliche (it's the kind of movie that Vittorio de Sica would be criticized relentlessly by trendy critics if he had directed it), but the breezy style of Ozu makes everything wonderful. It's really funny at times, and always very touching. I think it's the most enjoyable Ozu film, with the possible exception of I Was Born But..., that I've ever seen. 9/10.

Slightly different from the Ozu's I've seen before, but still a rather wonderful little film. Its his first film after the war. Only Ozu could film the desolate streetscape of a devastated Japan and make it seem so homely and normal. Every scene is magnificently composed - the first few shots, showing ramshackle homes framed by a wirescape of crooked electric cables sets the scene perfectly. Even the simplest domestic scenes are presented so beautifully they give a dignity to the ordinary people represented in the film.

The story is (as usual with Ozu) as simple as can be. A small flea-bitten boy, a stray, follows a man home, and a small group of neighbours argue amongst themselves what to do with him. He is left with a bad tempered widow. What happens is familiar - he slowly melts her heart. But how its done is not so familiar. The boy is never shown as particularly lovable - he's a quiet bedwetter 'pees like a horse' as the woman says. There is little or none of the saccharine you'd expect from other film makers, Japanese or otherwise. Its just shown very straight, with no sentimentality. Oh, and its a comedy - some lovely, very funny scenes. The acting is fantastic. One particular scene, where the neighbours accompany a singer with a rhythm tapped with chopsticks on places is brilliant, it alone is worth getting the DVD to see it.

The only let down is the ending, which becomes a little preachy. But its forgivable in the context, just 2 years after the end of the war, where Ozu perhaps felt he should give the audience a bit of a message (although as all scripts went through rigid censorship at the time we can't be certain it was all his idea). There is an obvious 'we should all be nicer to each other' message in the movie, and it doesn't shirk for a moment from the poverty at the time, despite the light hearted tone. Its hard to put yourself in the shoes of the contemporary audience, but they must have been heartened to see people so real to their own experience on the screen, with no false optimism or over-dramatic pessimism, just a very real slice of life.

Ozu's Record of a Tenement Gentleman, 1947. B/w, 72 minutes. Original title "Nagaya Shinshiroku ~ (長屋紳士録 ).

Viewed at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival of 2003. One of the best films seen here that year was a little known Japanese film, in the Ozu retrospective sidebar entitled, "RECORD OF A TENEMENT DWELLER" made just after the war in 1947. This was Ozu's return to filmmaking for Shochiku after four years of military service in China. The film is the story of a simple unmarried woman who is forced, much against her will, to take in a small boy, apparently abandoned in the postwar shattered Tokyo hustle and bustle. After much hostility toward the child, she finally realizes how much he has filled the void in her life and that she in fact loves him -- but only does this realization hit her when the father reappears to repossess his lost child. A simple story so directly told that it sneaks up on you like a time-bomb and makes you realize that your heart was crying -- but only ten minutes after the film is over! An early masterpiece from the master of Zen and the Art of telling stories on film, and an incredibly subtle, yet bombshell, performance by the main actress Chôko Iida, in my book, a retroactive Best Actress Oscar for the year that was. Iida was extremely active in Japanese silent pictures from 1923 on and had already appeared in supporting roles in three prewar Ozu films; "An Inn in Tokyo", (1935) the first version of "Floating Weeds" (1934), and "Dekigoro" (A Passing Fancy, 1933), but this performance when she was already pushing fifty was her acting apotheosis. Unfortunately Ozu's uniquely stylized films were not discovered in the west until after his death in 1963 and are only now becoming recognized little by little in astute cinema circles as the quiet unhurried masterpieces which they are.

It's such a shame that Ozu wasn't more of an outdoor director, because I've just found out his landscape shots are some of the most beautiful I have ever seen. This is one of Ozu's most beautiful movies.

As always, Chôko Iida is absolutely amazing. It's a beautiful story, with a lot of light, funny moments and tender, emotional ones as well. It's not very different from Ozu's pre-war movies, but as such it's equally beautiful. I was somehow disappointed for Ozu not exploring even more the tenement's habitants, but overall I was satisfied with Chôko Iida performance and the tender story of the bond between her and a child.