Le fils unique

"The Only Son" is Ozu's first "talkie" - and utilizes sounds in an efficient, restrained manner to help tell the story with calm grace. The beautiful simplicity that pervades the piece is classical Ozu, and amplifies the poignant tale of a mother coming back to visit her son, after sacrificing her livelihood to ensure he achieves higher education. When she realizes that he is unsatisfied with his life as a night-school teacher, a general melancholic tone begins to unfold through the progression of the narrative. The ending is nicely done, and overall, the film is crafted in that spare, simple perfection that is the stylistic hallmark of Ozu's cinema.

This is a nice piece of work from early Japanese cinema that's worth checking out for all fans of this period's films.

The plot is simple, nothing really special if you ask me, but Ozu sure knew how to handle this kind of simple stories he portrayed in all his films. It's a slow-paced film, which adds a more natural feeling to it in my opinion, full of powerful and emotional images supported by a really splendid and natural acting (as usual in Ozu's films).

Ozu really stands out from many other directors, he had the ability to portray life on screen and here you can definitely see it.

At first this kind of filmmaking didn't do much for me, but it has really grown on me with time. It surely is not for everyone; Ozu is just different cinema.

My score: 8.5/10

Of all the major directors in the world, Ozu was the last one to convert to sound; "The Only Son" was his first "all-talkie" film (in 1936), and it is remarkably inventive (technically) as well as deeply moving. Once again, his film deals with family dynamics: in this case, a widowed mother who has worked selflessly to provide her son with an education. But when she goes to visit him, she finds that he has not fulfilled his promise: he's stuck in a mediocre job, he has a wife and child and can't make any drastic changes because of his responsibilities. The ways that the mother and son try to reach an understanding, and their mutual resignation to the disappointments of life, create a glancing but powerful sense of that "quiet desperation" which was so often Ozu's theme.

In 1923, in the province of Shinshu, the widow and simple worker of a silk factory Tsune Nonomiya (O-Tsune) decides to send her only son to Tokyo for having a better education. Thirteen years later, she visits her son Ryosuke Nonomiya (Shinichi Himori), and finds that he is a poor and frustrated night-school teacher with a wife, Sugiko (Yoshiko Tsubouchi), and a baby boy.

"Hitori Musuko" is a poignant, heartbreaking, sensitive and beautiful movie about expectations, frustrations, revelations and hope in life. Once again the major concern of Ozu is with the family and human relationship. In "Hitori Musuko", Ozu brilliantly uses the sound, recent in 1936, in the end of the simple but touching story, when the machines in the factory stop working symbolizing the death of Tsune. I saw this movie in a Brazilian cable television in a copy that certainly needs restoration, and I regret to inform that only "Ohayô" has been released on DVD in Brazil. Only in festivals, and occasionally in cable television, Brazilians have the chance to see the work of this great director. Seeing the number of votes of this masterpiece in IMDb (only 88 votes), I believe that the distribution problem of this film might be international. My vote is ten.

Title (Brazil): "Filho Único" ("Only Son")

Incredibly gentle and touching Ozu picture about a single mother who works her butt off to send her only son off to school. Many years later, we follow her journey to visit that son in Tokyo. He hasn't kept in contact very well. His mother doesn't even know about his wife and infant son, nor that he is a grade school teacher, a rather low (and low-paid) position. Simply put, he's embarrassed at the little he has accomplished and he thinks his mother will be gravely disappointed that she went to so much trouble to educate him. The whole situation really hit home, and I was deeply moved by it. The film also features incredible cinematography and editing.