Rakudai wa shitakeredo

Ozu's follow-up to I GRADUATED, BUT... actually plays somewhat like a prequel: a student fails when the shirt on which he wrote his exam cheat sheet gets mistakenly sent to the laundry. The student contemplates his outcast fate as his graduating dorm-mates all face the working world. The film is loaded with clever shifts in perspective (such as when a boy, misunderstanding the meaning of 'flunk' declares that he wants to flunk just like his big brother), and the film becomes a hilarious and touching reflection on college life and what it means to leave it.

"I Flunked, But..." (Rakudai wa shita keredo) is an Ozu piece made in the 1930's, and a great example of what a Silent Film can do. A college satire set in Depression-era Japan, "I Flunked But.." is an excellent movie, a comic masterpiece, and perhaps one of the stronger examples of Ozu's silent film ouevre.

It concerns the humorous attempts made by Takahashi and his gang in trying to pass the rigourous "Exam Hell" mandated by the College of Economics they attend. We are introduced to a variety of very funny cheating techniques and the gang's dedication to perfecting odd gaits and struts. Takahasi and his cohorts fail the one important exam that enables them to graduate, when one of their valuable cheating tricks (a shirt cribbed with diagrams and notes) is taken out by the laundryman. This movie is filled with a bunch of comic miniutae as well, from Ozu's play with shadows (a noose shows up as a lamp's string after Takahasi fails the exam), superb dialogue (even though its a silent film - many lines are very good), some fairly memorable characters (one of Takahasi's dorm-mates, a bespectacled klutz, constantly thinks it absurd that he was able to graduate while Takahasi, his smart "teacher", fails), and some nice indoor cinematography in Ozu's classic style.

The film's ironic punchline comes in the harsh truth that during tough times, there are rarely any jobs, so the student who flunks is actually better off than the student who graduates. All of Takahashi's dorm-mates get rejected one job after the other and reminisce of the "good college days" - one of the most memorable lines is when one of the characters say: "I want to go back to college - we graduated too hastily". The film may be a hard find, being that its silent and B&W, (and it was made in 1930!) but if you can catch it, it's definitely worth it. I was able to watch it at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive - while a musician, Joel Adlen, played the score in the background on piano. Definitely a small fraction of the overall aesthetic greatness of Ozu as a director and an artist.

I'm in awe of Ozu, in case you haven't noticed yet. This particular film can be found on the "Student Comedies" set released by the BFI. It's very much influenced by Harold Lloyd, and it's magical.

Light years ahead of "Wakaki hi" (1929) that was released the year before, Ozu manages to capture here not only the intense emotional fluctuation of anticipation and disappointment and the student environment where these feelings are deeply rooted in pride and communal pressure to succeed.

While "Wakaki hi" (1929) has its darker, rawer moments, here Ozu extends this sense of loss quite dramatically. In fact, I sympathized with the main character to such an extent that most of the film was agonizing in the dread he was brooding in.

This, however, is Ozu's strength. There's brilliant comedy there, but it's the more brilliant because of his deep understanding of human emotion. The contrapuntal relation of the ebb and flow of laughter and sorrow flows naturally here and shows what a great filmmaking master Ozu was from the "begin-ning" (considering his earliest films are now lost).

While being lesser known than much of his work, Ozu's early silent "I Flunked, But..." is still a work of the finest filmmaking craftsmanship. It is a beautifully told rendition of a simple tale, one that centers around a young man that flunks college...and that's sort of it. It portrays this young man in such a way that during his journey of ups and downs, the emotions are heightened to an unexpected degree. the story seems rather consequential in comparison to many of commercial cinema's epic terrorist-robot- dinosaur threats, but this mildly silly and largely simplistic is far more relatable, sympathetic, and, in the end, emotional thanks to Ozu's brilliant eye for cinema. Not only does his camera move and stare with grace, capturing the action with poignant artistry, but his script works as both a college comedy and a sorrowful melodrama. Despite its lack of any reputation whatsoever and clear state of obscurity, this film is better than you probably imagine, and anybody interested should see it as soon as they get their hands on a copy.

"I Flunked, But..." (Rakudai wa shita keredo) is an Ozu piece made in the 1930's, and a great example of what a Silent Film can achieve. A college satire set in Depression-era Japan, "I Flunked But.." is an excellent movie, a comic masterpiece, and perhaps one of the stronger examples of Ozu's silent film ouevre.

It concerns the humorous attempts made by Takahashi and his gang of friends in trying to pass the rigourous "Exam Hell" mandated by the College of Economics they attend. We are introduced to a variety of very humorous cheating techniques and the gang's dedication to perfecting odd gaits and struts. Takahashi and his cohorts fail the one important exam that enables them to graduate, when one of their valuable cheating tricks (a shirt cribbed with diagrams and notes) is taken out by the laundryman. This movie is filled with a bunch of comic miniutae as well, from Ozu's play with shadows (a noose shows up as a lamp's string after Takahashi fails the exam), superb dialogue (even though its a silent film - many lines are very good), some fairly memorable characters (one of Takahashi's dorm-mates, a bespectacled klutz, constantly thinks it absurd that he was able to graduate while Takahasi, his smart "teacher", fails), and some nice indoor cinematography in Ozu's classic style.

The film's ironic punchline comes in the harsh truth that during tough times, there are rarely any jobs, so the student who flunks is actually better off than the student who graduates. All of Takahashi's dorm-mates receive one job-rejection after the next, and reminisce of the "good college days" - one of the most memorable lines is when one of the characters say: "I want to go back to college - we graduated too hastily". The film may be a hard find, being that its silent and B&W, (and it was made in 1930!) but if you can catch it, it's definitely worth it. Definitely a small fraction of the overall aesthetic greatness of Ozu as a director, auetuer and an artist.