Giorni di gioventù

Everyone has to start somewhere, even a legendary director like Yasujiro Ozu. Days of Youth is apparently his earliest surviving film, and even if we're to include films that have been tragically lost to time, it's still a title that comes very early in his career. There isn't a huge amount here, to my eyes, that suggests what kind of filmmaker he'd become, with Days of Youth feeling a bit like a director-for-hire kind of job.

Still, as far as very old comedies go, I've seen worse, and I've seen better. The premise is pretty slim for a movie that ends up running for approximately 100 minutes, with two college students in love with the same woman, and constantly making fools of themselves in their attempts to woo her. She's not really a character at all here, and the film's first half starts dragging pretty quickly. Things picked up a little in the second half, when the characters went on an extended ski trip, and the visuals were better here... though that whole section of the film eventually became tedious, too.

And then it kind of ends without much else to say. It's a bit of an uneventful film to me where there's not much to say about it beyond commenting that it's interesting how Ozu directed it and then went on to make the kinds of films he did. Those who are interested in his early days or want to watch everything he did should obviously check it out, but it's otherwise hard to recommend. I wasn't offended or bored to tears, taking into account the film's age, but neither could I find a great deal to be impressed by.

This breezy student comedy about the misadventures of two slacker collegians (Ichiro Yuki and Tatsuo Saito, who does a great riff on Harold Lloyd) is Ozu's earliest existing film. The narrative is as incidental as ever but eventually locks into an extended sequence capturing the foibles of a romantic triangle that develops during an extended skiing sequence -- which in itself is a wonder as it's probably the longest exterior sequence Ozu ever filmed. Ozu's filmmaking is more "mainstream" than what he's known for, utilizing dissolves, handheld camerawork and clever point of view shots to capture the thrills and spills of the ski slopes. Ozu's characteristically lovely moments of human intimacy are in evidence, but they have yet to be as sharply composed, pared down to the graphic simplicity that is his hallmark. It seems evident that a younger, more carefree Ozu directed this -- it's relatively slight but extremely affable depiction of youth -- one wonders what wonders Ozu would have done with AMERICAN PIE.

This Ozu film starts with a big, fat tracking shot, seemingly across half of Tokyo before it eventually settles on the lives of two college buddies: Ichirô Yûki and Tatsuo Saitô. Like most college movies of the era, the academic life is something to be dreaded and handwaved away and after they get through finals, it's off to the ski resort, where the real plot of the story begins, the competition over pretty Junko Matsui that has been simmering since the first scene.

When looking at the early works of a great artist, you try to find the roots of his future greatness, but there's little of that here. The Ozu that is revered is still and contemplative and Japanese. This one has a moving camera and pratfalls, an American movie poster on the wall (in this one it's SEVENTH HEAVEN) and product placement for Sun Maid raisins and Libby's canned vegetables. Chishu Ryu is present in a small role as a fearsome professor, the core of Ozu's troupe, but the film is very international in its tenor, as if he is waiting for William Fox to swing through Japan in case the recently hired Leo McCarey doesn't work out. Ozu was 26 when he made this, and still at the stage of his career when he probably didn't know what he wanted to be when he grew up. A buddy comedy about two college boys? Let him at it!

It's obvious in its outline, has good acting and some nice situations. More than that no one can ask.

This is not only the first of the four "student comedies" directed by Ozu Yasujirô but the earliest surviving Ozu we have. The genre came to Japan from imported American films, amongst which Harold Lloyd's The Freshman (1925) was arguably the most influential. The British Film Institute has now released all four of Ozu's films on DVD as part of their gigantic endeavor to release over 30 films (they've now released eighteen).

One could argue that this is far removed from the family dramas of Ozu's 1950s period: exuberant and blithe in contrast to the serious contemplativeness of his later work. I can see where you're coming from if you think like this, but Ozu's too good of a filmmaker to suffer what I think is a serious simplification.

Following Ozu's career is a like film school, really. Here already he's ferociously adventurous when it comes to framing, and the techniques and angles he's implementing show a great understanding of what film can do — remember that film was very new then, only 34 years old. Indeed, as pointed out by Rayns (2012), "Ozu obviously amused himself by experimenting with forms, camera movements and cutting patterns in his early comedies, gangster movies and melodramas." This cinematic zestfulness is as fitting as ever to genre we're dealing with, which is all about youthful exploration.

This early silent movie by Ozu is a one of the typical example of the simplicity of the director. This movie takes place almost in the same environment with very little changes, students bedrooms, mountain resort, sky sloops and bedrooms again. The external scenes are unfortunately a little bit spoilt by the early cinema technology, but still there are some rather catching shoots, one worthy considering is the one where the directors shoots the young man and the wanted lady from behind while they are side by side enjoying the landscape. The two male actors are quite into their part as the student playboy and the shy bookish boy, while the girl looks just like a mere inanimate object around which the whole plot is carried out, but her lack of expression and preferences is perfectly undertaken by the actress and definitely wanted by the director.

On the whole it's a nice easy film, that shows how young students lived like in those days, besides we get to know that things have changed little and that some things are common in any part of the globe. The typical love-triangle is well carried out and in the end the friendship between the two mates is not spoilt by their misadventures and neither the playboy nor the shy could take advantages of the young lady. Moreover all their efforts ended up to be vain, but since they are young and happy they could accept the fact without regretting to much about it. Ozu tells us perfectly how sometimes we should laugh at our youth mistakes or bad luck, instead of letting them driving us crazy. To make a long story short: a brief worth seeing piece of youth everyday life.