Amis de combat

I know this is like 100 years old, and it's a simple short film, but I don't care. Fighting Friends kind of sucks. If it's sacrilege to say that about any Yasujiro Ozu film, then I'm not sorry.

He was a great filmmaker but this is not a great short. I don't know how I can write a self-imposed paragraph or two on this, beyond just saying there's not very much to it at all. Two friends fight at one point, and also, they take in a mysterious young woman? It's a comedy but nothing funny happens.

At least it's less than a quarter of an hour long. And the shots both inside the train and of the train speeding along near the end were cool for their time. But otherwise... I've already forgotten this.

Atsushi Watanabe and Hisao Yoshitani Hisao Yoshitani are best friends. They share everything in their cramped apartment, from individual eggs to goldfish. Yet when they rescue Eiko Takamatsu from almost running her over, they discover that they can't share her.

I'd like to think that Yasujiro Ozu was directing this short under the influence of the Laurel & Hardy comedies, but Fat-and-Thin buddy pairs were not new to cinema, and the sort of gags he offers seem to be simultaneously more absurd and grounded than the practiced slapstick and offered by Hal Roach's two rising superstars. Some of the gags seem to reference Buster Keaton's early shorts. Perhaps that is simply Ozu's Japanese nature coming through, and his feeling that friends would not quarrel over the sort of thing they had been doing since day one, but only if something changed the equation. In any case, it's pleasant enough.

Although he is not listed in the IMDb credits, I thought I spotted Chishu Ryu as the buddies' supervisor.