Récit d'un propriétaire

Original title: Nagaya shinshiroku

IMDb RATING

YOUR RATING

In postwar Japan, an abandoned boy nobody wants to take care of grows a relationship with a cynical middle-aged woman.In postwar Japan, an abandoned boy nobody wants to take care of grows a relationship with a cynical middle-aged woman.In postwar Japan, an abandoned boy nobody wants to take care of grows a relationship with a cynical middle-aged woman.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

7.7/10

2.4K

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Trivia
This was the first movie made by director Yasujirô Ozu after returning to Japan from his wartime army service abroad. After the surrender, he had been held for half a year in a British POW camp near Singapore, where he had been stationed. Legend has it that he was late in returning to Japan (in February 1946) because, although he was scheduled to be repatriated earlier, another Japanese soldier was desperate to go home, and Ozu let this other man go in his place.

Quotes
Tamekichi: [curious about Tashiro's work, which involves fortunetelling] Does fortunetelling work?
Tashiro: Of course it does. Nothing works better.
Tamekichi: Really? The other day you left home wearing rain boots, but the day turned out to be sunny.
Tashiro: Weather isn't my specialty. The weather forecast on the radio works well for that.

Connections
Featured in The Story of Film: An Odyssey: Birth of the Cinema (2011)

User reviews18

Featured review

8/10

sad ending

It's a slightly odd film even for the Japanese but it was Yasujiro Ozu's first after a gap of five years after the war. A poor young boy follows him back to another home as he seems be have been abandoned by his father who it seems was looking for work. Back at his tenement housing he hopes that someone will look after him. Sees nobody keen and then they get a widow to take him on. Clearly she is not happy and several times she 'shoos' him away just like she might a pigeon. She reluctantly gives him the night but as he wets the bed and in the morning she puts his bedding on the line but amazingly, she simply gives him a fan and has him stand there to dry it. There is no talk about the war although there is talk of 'orphans' and she doesn't really want the boy but gradually she is not as hard on him but it is strange that she doesn't wash him, even though he clearly has fleas. There is a sad ending and we see the Saigo statue in Ueno Park where orphans play beside their popular hero and his dog.