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Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema
Over the last two decades, Yasujiro Ozu has won international recognition as a major filmmaker. Combining biographical information with discussions of the films' aesthetic strategies and cultural significance, David Bordwell questions the popular image of Ozu as the traditional Japanese artisan and examines the aesthetic nature and functions of his cinema.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
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About the author
David Bordwell
62 books220 followersDavid Bordwell, Jacques Ledoux Professor at the University of Wisconsin, is arguably the most influential scholar of film in the United States. The author, with his wife Kristin Thompson, of the standard textbook Film Art and a series of influential studies of directors (Eisenstein, Ozu, Dreyer) as well as periods and styles (Hong Kong cinema, Classical Hollywood cinema, among others), he has also trained a generation of professors of cinema studies, extending his influence throughout the world. His books have been translated into fifteen languages.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 3, 2024
این لیست فیلمهای پیشنهادی من است برای کسانی که خواهان آشنایی بیشتر با سینمای ژاپن هستند
Ornamental Hairpin (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1941)
Early Summer (Yasujirō Ozu, 1951)
Twenty-Four Eyes (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1954)
Kagemusha (Akira Kurosawa, 1980)
Thunder (Takashi Ito, 1982)
Typhoon Club (Shinji Sômai, 1985)
My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)
A Scene at the Sea (Takeshi Kitano, 1991)
Pom Poko (Isao Takahata, 1994)
Whisper of the Heart (Yoshifumi Kondō, 1995)
Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki, 1997)
Eureka (Shinji Aoyama, 2000)
Café Lumière (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2003)
Kotoko (Shinya Tsukamoto, 2011)
Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami, 2012)
Shin Godzilla (Hideaki Anno, 2016)
Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021)
The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki, 2023)
Still from Five Dedicated to Ozu (Abbas Kiarostami, 2003)
December 4, 2014
It's a shame that David Borwell's Ozu And The Poetics Of Cinema (1988) is out-of-print, since it is the definitive book in English on Japanese master director Yasujiro Ozu. Donald Richie's book, Ozu: His Life and Films, is also indispensable, but it only focuses on the late films of Ozu. Bordwell has studied all surviving films and therefore has a greater overall analysis of the complete career of Ozu. The first part of the book focuses on "Problems of Poetics" and is organized into eight chapters: 1. "Career" 2. "Backgrounds" 3. "Materials" 4. "Structures, Strictures, and Stratagems" 5. "Towards Intrinsic Norms" 6. "Freedom and Order" 7. "Pillows and Curtains" and 8. "Uses and Effects." In these sections Bordwell discusses the entire career of Ozu, his development, and other aspects of his film making. In the course of the general career discussion of Ozu he analyzes previous critics of Ozu, such as Paul Schrader, Donald Richie, and Noel Burch. Bordwell discusses their criticism and makes observations and judgements as well. In such discussion eh dismisses Burch's idea of "pillow shots," which are more accurately described as placing shots and point-of-view cutaways. It is largely easily readable for the general reader, however, there is a certain amount of academic jargon used when discussing the more technical aspects of filming. It was intriguing to learn that Ozu's three greatest influences were Charles Chaplin, Ernst Lubitsch, and Harold Lloyd. And that he was influenced by many more Hollywood directors such as John Ford and Leo Cary.
In the second part of the book he discusses the films individually and even has notes about non-existing films that have been lost. He makes several interesting and noteworthy observations about many of Ozu's films. For example, he uses Woman of Tokyo (1933) as a test case of Noel Burch's arguments of Ozu's work, since it is the film that he most frequently referred to in his study of the aesthetics of Ozu. Bordwell finds that most of his arguments are weakened by the number of omissions and inaccuracies regarding the film. Also, it was observed in the passage discussing There Was A Father (1942) by Masahiro Shinoda, a former assistant director for Ozu, that when the things that were in the frame at the beginning had disappeared or the position had changed; these were considered to be very dramatic by Ozu. It is something that he does often his films. I was surprised to see Bordwell's laudatory judgement about of one of Ozu's overlooked postwar films, Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947): "If Ozu had made only this seventy-two minute film, he would have ot be considered one of the world's greatest directors." In discussing Late Spring (1949) Bordwell notes that this film introduces Ozu the liberal who acknowledges the need for change despite the regret of the damage it will cause (rather than Ozu the conservative morning the loss of a way of life). He then points out that stylistically the film crystallizes intrinsic norms that will be central to the later films. In Early Summer (1951) Bordwell breaks down what he calls "the most stupendous camera movement in Ozu's career: a perfectly perpendicular rising which reveals Noriko and Fumiko as almost identical columns in a rippling expanse of sand." The effect is that it refuses the conventional high angle of the ordinary crane shot. It is a shot which Bordwell insists was quite worth the three days needed to set up. And he notes that in Green Tea Over Rice (1952), that he would never employ such flagrant camera movements seen in the film-the later films would be much more static in camera movements. To sum up, Bordwell has written a useful and revealing major study of one of the giants of cinema that is accessible to the general reader.
In the second part of the book he discusses the films individually and even has notes about non-existing films that have been lost. He makes several interesting and noteworthy observations about many of Ozu's films. For example, he uses Woman of Tokyo (1933) as a test case of Noel Burch's arguments of Ozu's work, since it is the film that he most frequently referred to in his study of the aesthetics of Ozu. Bordwell finds that most of his arguments are weakened by the number of omissions and inaccuracies regarding the film. Also, it was observed in the passage discussing There Was A Father (1942) by Masahiro Shinoda, a former assistant director for Ozu, that when the things that were in the frame at the beginning had disappeared or the position had changed; these were considered to be very dramatic by Ozu. It is something that he does often his films. I was surprised to see Bordwell's laudatory judgement about of one of Ozu's overlooked postwar films, Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947): "If Ozu had made only this seventy-two minute film, he would have ot be considered one of the world's greatest directors." In discussing Late Spring (1949) Bordwell notes that this film introduces Ozu the liberal who acknowledges the need for change despite the regret of the damage it will cause (rather than Ozu the conservative morning the loss of a way of life). He then points out that stylistically the film crystallizes intrinsic norms that will be central to the later films. In Early Summer (1951) Bordwell breaks down what he calls "the most stupendous camera movement in Ozu's career: a perfectly perpendicular rising which reveals Noriko and Fumiko as almost identical columns in a rippling expanse of sand." The effect is that it refuses the conventional high angle of the ordinary crane shot. It is a shot which Bordwell insists was quite worth the three days needed to set up. And he notes that in Green Tea Over Rice (1952), that he would never employ such flagrant camera movements seen in the film-the later films would be much more static in camera movements. To sum up, Bordwell has written a useful and revealing major study of one of the giants of cinema that is accessible to the general reader.
May 20, 2018
The best analysis of a director I've ever read. I'm a little biased toward Bordwell, since he's a UW Madison professor, but I can't think of any academic writer who is as accessible to a general audience and who also doesn't dumb down his prose. I'd always been fairly intimidated by Ozu and had even rented Tokyo Story for a few weeks once before returning it unwatched. I thought his movies would be long, laborious, and important. Movies that you are glad you saw in retrospect, but that can be a slog to get through. Enter this book.
On a recommendation from a friend I got this out-of-print book from the fabulous Pico-Union library and dove into the first half of the book. This half first deals with Japan's history and culture, Ozu's life and influences, and then dives into his extremely unique and experimental style. Reading about the elements of it, I was struck by how similar it is to the Oilipo literature movement in France where they arbitrarily add restraints to all of their work. So, for example, Perec will write a novel without using the letter "E". In Ozu's case, he works from a strangely limited tool box with rules on how often shots last, what angles a shot can cut to (only multiples of 45), how low a camera should be place (extremely), what the basic narratives of a film should be about, to create a very distinctive, and quietly powerful, cinema.
Bordwell also shows how playful his work really is and how he confounds viewer expectations by breaking his rules occasionally. I don't think I would have caught all of the Ozu-isms without this book and I wish it were available for cheaper than the currently advertised $100 online.
On a recommendation from a friend I got this out-of-print book from the fabulous Pico-Union library and dove into the first half of the book. This half first deals with Japan's history and culture, Ozu's life and influences, and then dives into his extremely unique and experimental style. Reading about the elements of it, I was struck by how similar it is to the Oilipo literature movement in France where they arbitrarily add restraints to all of their work. So, for example, Perec will write a novel without using the letter "E". In Ozu's case, he works from a strangely limited tool box with rules on how often shots last, what angles a shot can cut to (only multiples of 45), how low a camera should be place (extremely), what the basic narratives of a film should be about, to create a very distinctive, and quietly powerful, cinema.
Bordwell also shows how playful his work really is and how he confounds viewer expectations by breaking his rules occasionally. I don't think I would have caught all of the Ozu-isms without this book and I wish it were available for cheaper than the currently advertised $100 online.
July 10, 2025
Read this one in fits and starts a bit during this past semester and finished through the rest this summer. Bordwell is covering a perfect subject for his sharp formal analysis here, giving parametric narration its best case study in long form after the brief treatment in Narration in the Fiction Film. What emerges here is remarkable in identifying formal patterns, principles, and dynamics across a single filmmaker’s oeuvre, but I’m especially appreciative of how Bordwell situates the role of material within his poetics of cinema. While he doesn’t take its qualities quite as far as Thompson’s earlier conception of excess (though he does use the concept at times), material here is carefully shown to include ideology and culture in important ways (Bordwell even suggests that material might be simpatico with a conjunctural analysis, a union that has unfortunately not been consummated in historical poetics or cultural studies) and at the same time folded and molded into transformative shapes by formal design and patterning. It’s just delightful; required reading for any Ozu fan or reader interested in Bordwell but skeptical of his formalism as an “art for art’s sake” one.
June 30, 2018
One of the directors I return to watching over and over. This book, very dense and very technique focused, is the best on him I have ever read.
July 6, 2023
Such a fun companion piece to Ozu's filmography. Bordwell's perspective enriched and informed my experience of Ozu's work. 👍
July 16, 2025
شاید برای دوست داشتن ازو، دوست داشتن در حد شیفتگی، باید یجور .دیگهای عاشق سینما باشی
May 23, 2011
Detailed analysis of films, mostly from a technical perspective.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews