David Vining's Blog, page 13

Passing Fancy

Ozu tricked me on this one. I read nothing about it before it started, and as the opening act played out, I thought I was getting a romance. Instead, it ended up being a story about a father and his son, a melodrama that effectively works within its box while peeking out beyond its borders to work quite well. It made me think of Woman of Tokyo, the melodrama that simply went too far in my eyes, and it acted as a contrast to something that kept things sedate enough to work more effectively.

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Dragnet Girl

Interestingly enough, by the time Ozu had made Dragnet Girl, he’d already made his first sound film, Until the Day We Meet Again, but that’s lost to time. I only bring it up because, like a few of his late silent films before this, Dragnet Girl is screaming to have been shot in sound. There is so much dialogue delivered in intertitles that it almost feels like a film that was shot for sound and the only remaining copy is one delivered to silent-only cinemas. That being said, it’s also a retu...

Woman of Tokyo

Ozu’s shortest feature at only 46-minutes, Woman of Tokyo is the first Ozu film that feels more like an attempt to replicate Ozu rather than a film he made himself. The pieces are there, but the tone is wrong. Reportedly made in no more than 9 days while he was waiting for the production of Dragnet Girl to get ready, the film just simply goes too far into melodrama in its final moments to feel like genuine Ozu. And, to make matters even worse, I just don’t think it works. It’s too much over ...

Where Now Are the Dreams of My Youth?

Well, golly. That hit me pretty hard. Repeating the pattern of a light comedy for the first hour or so drifting into a humanist dramatic look at people in the final half hour, Where Now Are the Dreams of My Youth? is the best example of this so far. The emotions run deeper, the comedy is funnier, and everything just wraps up better. The opening hour is still looser than it needs to be, but the end result is very worthwhile.

Tetsuo (Ureo Egawa) is in college with three friends. Two are on ...

I Was Born, But…

Ozu was very ready for the sound era to start in Japan. His use of intertitles for dialogue is getting out of control, the films digging deeper into characters’ specificities, a need that requires people to talk. This was 1932. The sound era had already been in America for three years, and there’s no way Japan didn’t know about it or weren’t working towards it. I don’t know if Ozu was prepping himself for the sound era or just letting the sound era sweeping across the globe to influence him,...

Tokyo Chorus

The more time goes on in Ozu’s career, the more purely Ozu his films feel, even when he’s making a dramatic comedy that takes place mostly outside the house. It’s a combination of small moments and the overall dramatic push of the film that give Ozu this unique feel of quietly embracing the smallness of everyday life, not seeing it as a bad thing but something to be celebrated in its own little ways. It’s life-affirming and warm, and it’s a wonderful way to spend 90 minutes.

Shinji (Tokih...

Re-Animator, the 4K release from Ignite Films

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Okay, so I was actually sent this release by Ignite Films with the understanding that I would review it. I never promised a positive review in exchange for the disc.

So, let me just say that my exposure to Re-Animator has been limited. I saw it once, maybe 20 years ago. I liked it then, I really liked it now. It’s really funny. I’ve thought about picking it up from time to time, but this is the first time I’ve owned it and the first time I’ve seen it in a generation.

And, since this is...

The Lady and the Beard

Technically, there are three ladies here. Jeez. Another film by Ozu dealing with change, accepting it with grace, this time centered around the idea of growing up and leaving behind childish things, like a beard, while retaining the parts of you that should grow with age. There’s also the first instance of a gag writer credit (James Maki, which was apparently Ozu’s pseudonym) that I’ve seen in his films (there may be others, but I don’t read Japanese), implying a much funnier film that the m...

That Night’s Wife

I didn’t expect a crime movie to be the most Ozu film in his early career, but this story of, essentially, three people in a room ends up the quiet, introspective look at choices, change, and the inevitability of people adapting to new things is as much in line with Tokyo Story or Late Autumn as anything else so far. On the other hand, it’s also his most visually striking work, with Ozu wearing German Expressionistic and Hitchcockian influences on his sleeve, especially in the opening ten mi...

I Flunked, But…

Part of a series of films with the same title structure, and perhaps supposed to exist in the same universe as Days of Youth, I Flunked, But… is a nice, very short feature film that once again shows Ozu playing with both comedy and his favorite thematic approach to characters. It’s slight, with not a whole lot to talk about, but it’s also a nice 65-minutes.

Five friends at university have decided to cheat their way through their final exams. Their system for their multi-day exam is for on...