Seishun no yume ima izuko

Ureo Egawa is a third-year student at university. He's the son of a rich company director, and pretty lackadaisical about his studies. He's on the cheer-leading squad, hanging out at the local tea house where Ozu regular Kinuyo Tanaka is the object of his fancy, and cutting class to play chess with his cohort. However, while they're cheating on finals, he's summoned home. His father has died, and he has to take over the business. A year later, his pals show up and ask for jobs. He slips them the answers on the entrance exams.

Gradually, Egawa notices that the easy friendship of their former life is slipping away. They've become yes men. When Miss Tanaka shows up, engaged to one of them, he is startled. Didn't she know he loved her? Didn't his friend know he loved her? What did he think, getting engaged to her?

Ozu always showed a lot of compassion for the underdog in his movies, but in this one, he asks about the top dog. I found the answer surprising, if, as always, compassionate.

Pff, where do I even begin. The first half is way too funny for a silent film that doesn't use slapstick as its method for comedy. Then the film slowly and surprisingly transforms into one of the most poignant melodramas that uses elements that were set up in the first half masterfully. Every scene, every shot, every intertitle feels so crucial for the story of the film and every shot is constructed so carefully, as I have come to expect from Ozu. It's absolutely magnificent how a film without sound managed to make me so engaged to the pictures. I read a review which stated that 'Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth' borrowed elements from Ozu's earlier body of work and as I have seen none of his earlier films I really hope that seeing them won't affect my views on this film negatively.

When his industrialist father unexpectedly dies, fun-loving college student Tetsuo Horino (Ureo Egawa) finds himself president of a large company, a position that he doesn't take very seriously (much to his uncle's (the vice-president) annoyance) and when his college buddies show up hoping he can find jobs for them, he cheerfully helps them cheat on the company's entrance exams, just as they used to help each other cheat at school. Unfortunately, it soon becomes apparent that Tetsuo's position as his friends' 'superior' has made the dynamics of their friendship very different, especially when one of them, Taichirô (Tatsuo Saitô), becomes engaged to Shigeko (Kinuyo Tanaka), a young waitress that Tetsuo was planning on wooing. Directed as a minor, low-budget side-project by Yasujirô Ozu (who made 1953's poignant 'Tokyo Story'), the story is slight but the characters are engaging and the imagery, especially of the growing 'Westernisation' of Japanese culture fascinating. Tetsuo always wears Western styles (although his friends sometimes wear yukatas), as does all of the senior management at the company, yet he quickly rejects a wealthy, assertive 'non-traditional' young woman as a potential wife, hoping to reunite with the soft-spoken, diffident, kimono-wearing Shigeko. There are posters for Hollywood films (such as 'Hell's Angels' (1930)) on the walls of the bakery where the guys hangout (sometimes drinking tea, other times beer) and English words like 'bakery' and 'private' are often seen. The film is silent and the version I watched (on TCM) had translated intertitles but no music. Despite the strange experience of watching a completely silent film, the 90 minutes passed quickly enough. The entire cast is very good but I especially liked Saitô's 'hang-dog' friend Taichirô, who doesn't seem to have much of a future without his wealthy friend's generosity and is forced into a tough choice when, not knowing that he and Shigeko were engaged, Tetsuo announces his plans to court the young woman. A likable, small film about change and enduring friendship. Recommended.

Ozu revisits the dichotomy between schoolboy idealism and working world realities, this time focusing on four college friends, one of whom (Tatsuo Saito) happens to be the son of a corporate executive; the son takes over upon his father's death, and his friends come seeking employment. Their friendship clearly isn't the same under this new working relationship, the subordinates become yes-men to the point that one of them says nothing when Saito casts an eye on his fiance. This leads to a climax even more violent than those of A HEN IN THE WIND or THE MUNEKATA SISTERS, a minute-long beating served by one friend to another that is all the more stunning in that the other two friends passively look on. Startlingly raw and deeply unresolved, this is perhaps Ozu's most disturbing exploration of social inequality and the damage it unleashes even among the most loyal friends.

Well, golly. That hit me pretty hard. Repeating the pattern of a light comedy for the first hour or so drifting into a humanist dramatic look at people in the final half hour, Where Now Are the Dreams of My Youth? Is the best example of this so far. The emotions run deeper, the comedy is funnier, and everything just wraps up better. The opening hour is still looser than it needs to be, but the end result is very worthwhile.

Tetsuo (Ureo Egawa) is in college with three friends. Two are on the cheer squad, Kumada (Kenji Oyama) and Shimazaki (Chishu Ryu), and the third is a hard studier who always ends up last in class, Saito (Taichiro Saiki). They have fun. They cheat on tests. They yearn after the baker's daughter, Shigeko (Kinuyo Tanaka). They're generally there to have a good time. However, things change when Tetsuo's father, Kenzo (Haruro Takeda), dies, Tetsuo must join his uncle, Kanzo (Ryotaro Mizushima), at his father's firm without graduating as the new president.

This is where the film most obviously matches its title. As president, he's treated with distance and respect by everyone around him with Kanzo looking on disapprovingly as Tetsuo tries to make light of his position. His first day, for instance, is an hour and a half long speech by Kanzo about the state of the company followed by Tetsuo smiling and, very briefly, saying that he hopes the workers work as hard for him as they had for his father. It's simple and quick, the workers love it, but Kanzo disapproves. This extends to how he treats the office boy who runs errands or how he smiles as he just walks through the office.

There's always some level of social commentary going on in these films, but I think this is one of the strongest examples of it in Ozu's filmography at this point because it's so intimately tied to character. It's about corporate life in Japan at the time, about its dehumanizing nature, and it's tied into Tetsuo's sudden need to grow up. We never get a good sense of what the business actually does, but that's not the point. The point is Tetsuo's sudden-onset adulthood.

This gets complicated when his three friends come to him a year later, having failed to graduate, and asking for jobs. He's happy to accept because he misses his friends, helps them cheat through the entrance exam, and yet...they still treat him with distance.

And that isolation for Tetsuo ends up the driving concern of the film. He's alone. Any girl his mother tries to arrange a marriage with he finds unappealing (there's an amusing early scene with a Westernized girl where Tetsuo tries to scare her off by claiming to be a drunk thief, but it just excites her). His friends are suddenly distant and respectful to him instead of playful. His uncle refuses to let him connect to anyone at work. Into his life suddenly comes Shigeko again, and he's thrilled at the sight of her. He falls head over heels for her, and he even gets sign off from all three of his friends to pursue her.

Except, there's a catch. And the way Ozu plays it out is magnificent. Shigeko is already promised to someone. Rules of character efficiency require it to be someone we know, and Tetsuo's reaction to someone just giving up their girl because a president asked for it is great. It's emotional and satisfying in a grown up way, showing that Tetsuo, for all of his yearning for friendship and levity, has really grown. And that growth happened through what he's been going through. He watched his friends grow distant to him, subserviate themselves in his presence just because of his title. It taught him what was actually important. The outburst, which actually gets shockingly physical, is completely earned.

I think this is Ozu's best film up to this point. I still think he could tighten things up in his first hours, and I wish they were funnier than they are (they're funny, just not that funny), but the emotional catharsis of the end is complex and deeply satisfying.