Il était un père

Most of the films of Yasujiro Ozu take a very restricted time period: a few days at the most. "There Was a Father" is unusual in that the time span is actually quite long: it stretches over a number of years (this is also the case with "The Only Son"), as it chronicles the relationship of a widower with his son. The father, a schoolteacher (played by Chishu Ryu), struggles to make sure that his son has advantages that he never had; in this case, the son is appreciative of all that the father has done, and the relationship is one of the most heartwarming of all familial relationships in Ozu's work. "There Was a Father" represents one of the most beautiful depictions of a good parent in all of world cinema.

Being a fan of Ozu, you see here all the elements of his film making: The long shots, the trains, the interaction of family members etc. Kind of a precursor to the superior "Late Spring", this story revolves around a father and son's relationship. He works hard to get his son through school, so he can have a better life. However, they are not in the same place, so they do not see each other all that often. The film spans several years, in which the son goes from a young boy to a man. Chishu Ryu, who has starred in many Ozu films, is the father. Of course, he is great, he always is. Since the mother passed before the film even started, the boy only has the father, and their relationship is the heart of this film. A good to almost very good film, it was shown, appropriately enough, on Fathers Day on Turner Classic Movies. If you like Ozu, you'll want to see this. If you're new to him, check out the films with Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara, as well as his swan song "Autumn Afternoon" and even "I Was Born, But" before watching this. I liked it, it was a nice film. Its another worthy Ozu film, in a career that had so many of them.

Slow-moving tale of a father's relation to his son. After a pupil accidentally dies on an excursion, a teacher (Chishu Ryu) retires from services and starts working second rate jobs to provide for his son's education. The movie jumps many years to show the relation of the father and son as the son has come adult. It is a film about sacrifice and duty. The two main characters must live a life apart, given that the son has so fulfill his studying duties and the father is working elsewhere. There are some heartthrob scenes with the small boy and a gentle Ozu melancholy throughout, but I find it not to have very much going for it in terms of theme display or drama compared to other Ozu I have seen, with basically just the two characters. Still, effective film-making on very simple premises. Excellent score – I thought the composer must have been Ozu regular, but was not.

This great film in the Japanese neorealism period is every bit as good as the best Italian neorealism films of the late 40s and early 50s. The Italian films are generally considered to be the best of that genre, but There Was a Father and films like Tokyo Story, a film about growing old in Japan and having your family leave you, are classics that have never been equalled in over 60 years. The secrets to these films are that they tell a simple story with simple techniques. There are no special effects, terrific chases, action sequences, or great suspense. Life is not like those things. These films are. Give yourself a treat and watch both of them.

In this Japanese drama from Shochiku and director Yasujiro Ozu, Mr. Horikawa (Chishu Ryu) is a respected school teacher who is raising his young son Ryohei (Haruhiko Tsuda) alone, after the death of Horikawa's wife. A tragedy causes Horikawa to resign his position and move to the country. As his son grows and needs better schooling, Horikawa makes the difficult decision to move to the city for better paying work. The father and son then spend the next decade or more barely seeing one another, as the grown son (Shuji Sano) attends university and then begins work in another city.

This was made under the strictest conditions during wartime, when all films were required to have some element of propaganda that helped the war effort. Ozu gets by with having the father's sacrifice for his son's greater good work as a lesson to the Japanese populace to sacrifice for their country. It's there if you want to see it, but one could just as easily watch the film and not notice any propaganda. Ryu is terrific in his subdued way, his gently smiling man of simple virtue a living embodiment of the Ozu cinematic aesthetic.

I was struck with how often Ozu uses shots of large, foreboding architecture, such as artless multi-story office buildings or smokestacks or harsh concrete bridge pilings, and juxtaposes these images with scenes of common familial love and warmth, as if to say that family life is the one antidote to the cold modern world. Ozu's movies aren't for everyone, and I would completely understand people finding them boring and pointless. But to me their Zen, regimented tranquility and deceptive simplicity are among the finest in world cinema. Recommended.