Two Films by Yasujizo Ozu: The Only Son & There Was a Father

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of 5): ****½

It's hard to imagine a time when there were no Japanese movies playing in American cinemas but for obvious reasons there was a certain lack of Japanese film distribution in the states during WWII. The great director Yasujiro Ozu first became noticed here some years later, with Tokyo Story (1953), but with the help of The Criterion Collection's new release of two early Ozu films, The Only Son (1936) and There Was a Father (1942), it's clear that he was making great films of that ilk all along.

On one of the set's extras, film scholar David Bordwell proclaims Ozu his favorite filmmaker, and the culmination of all that is possible in cinema. Ozu started out as a fully-realized artist and proceeded with consistent, high-quality work throughout his career as evidenced by these two films, which look to have been restored as sharply as possible from some fairly sketchy, damaged film elements.

In The Only Son a mother (Choko Iida) works to put her son through elementary school. The boy's teacher (Chishu Ryu) turns up with the news that the boy is doing well in school and urges the mother to continue his education. Though she can't afford it, the mother resolves to sacrifice everything to do so, and the boy promises to be a great man. Years later, the mother visits the grown son (Shinichi Himori) in Toyko. He works for very little pay as a night school teacher, and he's married and has a small child. He puts on a big show to entertain his mother in the big city, but quickly runs out of money. Eventually they have a painful confrontation, but everything changes when the son gives some money to his neighbors after an accident.

For this film, Ozu creates a strangely barren Tokyo, filled with scrubby fields, smokestacks, and his usual hanging laundry. Likewise, the man's old teacher is also living in Tokyo, but works selling pork cutlets; everything is difficult and desperate in the big city. But, as always in Ozu, there's some hope for the younger generation.

In There Was a Father Chishu Ryu stars again as the title father. After one of his students dies while on a field trip to Tokyo, he retires out of shame and a sense of duty. He then struggles for years to make sure his own son is educated, even though they are always separated. The story culminates when the grown son (Shuji Sano) returns home for ten days' visit and they finally get to spend some time together. This one has the same kind of bittersweet tone, with a tiny measure of hope, as The Only Son. But the Japanese censors of the time decided that this movie had the appropriate themes (sacrifice, duty, etc.) for the country at war, and so it became an almost unwittingly political, (unusual for Ozu) as well as artistic, triumph.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about both films is that Ozu himself was still pretty young (in his 30s and 40s), and had not yet made his subtle shift toward acceptance that can be found in his later work. The thing that makes his later films so peaceful is that there's a lack of worry and sadness over things that can't be helped. Some things merely pass on from one generation to the next, and it's up to each new generation to learn these lessons; the older one simply cannot teach them. As Ozu grew wiser, he tended to relax more, and so these older films might seem a bit sadder and more bittersweet.

Bordwell and Kristen Thompson offer up video interviews on both discs, providing all kinds of illuminating background information, and there's also a a video interview with Japanese film scholar Tadao Sato on The Only Son. Critic Tony Rayns adds liner notes for both discs. Also in the liner notes, there's an appreciation of actor Ryu by Donald Richie, and a brief interview with Ryu.