Hey everyone, I hadn't realized that this video got this many comments, so I never thought to check and answer haha Regarding some of the comments: I totally agree that Mizoguchi needs to be in that discussion. If I had more time, I'd certainly include him. This was a university project of mine that required a comparison between two artworks (hence, only two examples). Glad to hear you all liked it, and all the constructive feedback was awesome! I never thought to continue making videos like this, but your comments are definitely making me at least consider it.
Thank you for this video! I agree that Mizoguchi is very important to Japanese cinema, however, your video is called "Two Faces of Japanese Cinema", not "THE Two Faces of Japanese Cinema". And with respect to you considering making more of these videos, either about Japanese cinema just cinema in general, I give you my support!
"Mizoguchi's greatness was that he would do anything to heighten the reality of every scene. He never made compromises… Of all Japanese directors, I have the greatest respect for him... With the death of Mizoguchi, Japanese film has lost its truest creator." - Akira Kurosawa
Yeah he is usually considered the third great master. After that you have Naruse and Miyazaki and plenty of other masters. I love Foreign cinema, especially Japanese cinema. Still, Ozu is my favorite for the calm he brings me. He puts me in a meditative state.
There are a lot of good ideas in this brilliantly edited video. The notion that the opposition between Kurosawa and Ozu is not between "Western" Kurosawa and "Japanese" Ozu, but rather between two kinds of "Japaneseness" is a view I endorse. One cavil: the author of this video claims that Kurosawa was not concerned with the individual and that Ozu was. For me, the opposite is closer to the truth. Kurosawa says explicitly in his autobiography that, after the war, he wanted to make films that asserted the value of the individual. Whereas Ozu, though he filmed stories about Japanese people of all ages and classes, invariably perceives and displays them as part of the larger unit of the family, and their actions and sufferings only make sense in that context, not as individuals per se. But otherwise, the Otoko vs. Onna dichotomy that the author presents here makes sense. I also thought the bibliography at the end was a nice (and useful) touch.
This is a great, informative video of two master filmmakers! As a former film student and now a working filmmaker, it's awesome to be reminded - through videos like yours - why we love film! Thanks a lot for that! :)
I disagree that "Tokyo Story" is a "japanese story", it's an universal story that happens everywhere. The title, "Tokyo Story" may even serve as a hint of this. The city, the modern, the changing, the passage of time, and it relation to the family and generations of parent and child. A story as old as time, I remember that there was hints of that even on the Epic of Gilgamesh! The way in which Ozu films may be "japanese", the things and images and emotions that he gives priority, but the story itself, not.
It seems unfair to talk about how Japanese cinema was without analyzing Kenji Mizoguchi. After all, he is known as the most "Japanese" filmmaker of the 3. Still, great video
Pran97 Yes, indeed. But the maker of this documentary isn’t pretending that his purpose is to talk about Japanese cinema alone, but to compare & contrast Kurasawa & Ozu. There should be documentaries about the great Mizoguchi. I saw a v good one recently,
Very interesting! One thing - I suggest you to use もの (hiragana) instead of 物 (kanji), for 物 tends to mean a solid object/thing and in this case もの can be a situation, feeling and so on. And you also can write もののあはれ, too, which is the old way of spelling but still popular and used.
Masaki Kobayashi is right up there also, and I would argue he is even more important than the two of these as his best movies combine the drive and moral questions of both directors.
However, for instance in Tokyo Story wabi-sabi is not exactly about the ephemeral in life in the Western sense of "memento mori" but instead about the fact that growing of life and decaying of life belong together as an eternally continuing circle of life and in that sense the gift of the mother's watch to the daughter in law with the wish to her to forget about her late husband and marry anew means the continuum of life and not the end of it;
Valeu, Zé Ninguém! Brasileiro? I made this video for a class, and wasn't planning on doing any more, but comments like this really motivate me to give it a shot. Thank you so much.
SO beautiful. It took me four nights to watch. I looked at some scenes or dialogue lines multiple times. As Ronald Richie wrote (paraphrasing): American films are about action, European films are about character, Japanese films are about ATMOSPHERE. It is certainly true of this masterpiece.
Hey, cool video. One caveat to keep in mind is that Ozu loved American films. Particularly Buster Keaton and D.W. Griffith. But he was constantly consuming western films and his visual style was informed by that. Wish you mentioned Mizoguchi as he was considered the most "Japanese" of the three. It's weird how Ozu is considered to be a textbook example of a "Japanese" director. Maybe he drew more attention to everyday mannerisms and customs that Kurosawa sometimes liked to brush by. Anyways, great job.
“Maybe exist some different in relation with me (Kurosawa) and Mizoguchi, for example his main characters are women’s, and the world that he describe its the world of the woman’s, the businessman, the middle class, etc. The woman’s are not my speciality”. Kurosawa in a interview with Donald Ritchie 1960
Interesting thesis--but if one chooses Ikiru rather than Rashomon is the distinction as clear? I don't know Ozu's work very well, so cannot comment on that side of it.
I don't think I agree with your take on the low angle of the Ozu shots because the camera is too low even for a sitting perspective. Perhaps Ozu is trying to give the shot a stage-like quality.
I used to like Kurosawa but did not understand why Ozu was considered one of the greats. Now I still like Kurosawa, but I definitely find Ozu more appealing. Ozu is just someone that you appreciate more as you grow older and realize that there are not many like him.
I can't think of many stories with themes more universal than Tokyo Story. Parents hopes and dreams for their children. Adult children too busy with their own lives to take time for their elderly parents. It's interesting to categorize these two filmmakers as "feminine" vs "masculine". But it's odd that you think these supposedly masculine stories are more universal than supposedly feminine stories of love, family, community, striving and disappointment. To me it seems quite the opposite. Wherever you live, misunderstandings across the generations exist. Another example, Ozu's "The Only Son" about a mother's sacrifices to give her son a better life and how circumstances (economic depression) destroy their hopes for the future.
Thank you, thank you. I have for years observed the masculine vs. feminine approaches of Kurosawa and Ozu and also seen it in relation to Western art and literature, as with Melville's _Moby Dick_ of action packed adventure upon the grand quest of conquering the ultimate truth vs. Jane Austin's _Pride and Prejudice_ (and other novels) with a Fitzwilliam Darcy character and the eligible daughter Elizabeth available for marriage, with all the action transpiring within the drawing room, yet a world of action and insight into the human condition occurs and unfolds on those pages.
Very good scholarship. I'm glad you covered the "non-Japanese-ness" of Kurosawa and the humility (floor POV) and transience ("aware") of Ozu. Very good post! Thank you!
I appreciate your insight into these two directors, and these two films, all of which I have held close now for many, many years. Your presentation here feels like we are having a conversation, a chat between two folks intimately familiar with the subjects, who rarely sit down with anyone else who understands. Thank you. I cannot recall from memory any Ozu film that "crosses over" from onna to otoko, but I have to wonder now if maybe Kurosawa did not cross over to onna when he created Ikuru. And if we allow that, then there perhaps are others as well, especially in the earlier days?
3:30 "Kurosawa 'the least Japanese of Japanese film directors.' This makes me chuckle. When I was in college there was (allegedly) a Donald Ritchie quote: "Kurosawa was the most Japanese of Japanese film directors." A college professors said this more than a few times. Any of us who'd seen even one Ozu movie knew this couldn't possibly be the case and just figured that it was a simple mistake that got repeated by a lot of people who didn't know better . Kurosawa is of course Japanese, but he's also more universal. Keep in mind that in his youth, Kurosawa considered himself to be a Marxist, so he set out to express the universal condition of humans. I laughed when I read the non-Chinese scriptwriter of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon saying that asking him to work on this script was like someone not an American trying to make a Western... Well, what's the best Western? Yojimbo. Sergio Leone (still not an American) proved it again. Tampopo is what you'd get if you were Japanese and said, "I'd like to make a Western in Japan,' (and it's billed as the First Noodle Western") a terrific movie, but Yojimbo went a level deeper and told a Japanese story that was also an American Western. I don't know where you got the bit about people thinking Ozu's tatami level shots aggrandizing his characters. I've not once heard this. I've always heard it explained as 1. something Japanese viewers would understand and feel respected for, but technically 2 it's about the midpoint floor to ceiling, this is the best height to show an interior while keeping the verticals straight up and down. Even when we look up from the floor in a room we don't perceive the corners of rooms converging. As a photographer after many years, somethings that don't seem to bother anyone else can be constantly annoying. So Ozu by not bothering with dissolves, camera movement, different lenses... everything matches, there are no disruptive 'effects' that are common with wide angle lenses. (Every source I can find on the web says Ozu used a 50mm lens. I remember it as a 58mm lens.) btw the 'cherry blossom festival' in Onomichi in the Tokyo Story clip. This is the end of the cherry blossoms in bloom because the shot is the petals falling off the blossoms. I think an another way to look at this subject might be to compare Japanese filmmakers with Canadian. How hard have Canadians been trying for how long to 'double' Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal as New York or other US locations? I can't think of a single Japanese film that ever attempted this.
I have mixed feelings about this movie. But then, isn't great cinema meant to be so? The positive side: - very nicely shot and edited! - the final dialogue shows that so-called good, caring people tend to be very much enamored of themselves The negative side: - the profusion of pointless, emotionally bankrupt dialogues ("You must be tired" / "No I'm fine". / "I just hope we're not inconveniencing you." / "It's been a long time"). - the implicit approval of Japanese militarism (the only positive character among the younger generation - namely the young widow - wants to stay faithful to her deceased husband)
I am an admirer of Ozu's films, Late Spring and Floating Weeds, being my favorites. I have never watched an original Kurosawa film and now it is time to explore his work.
as many others have pointed out, the japanese golden age of cinema has at least two other (although less prolific but still) super important directors: kenji mizoguchi and masaki kobayashi
This threw perspective. Wish we could talk more in person on nuances of Japanese culture and films... do you have any idea of Shindo's movie "Oni Baba"?
Everyone whining that the video isn't an exhaustive history of all great Japanese directors. Ozu and Kurosawa really are the two greatest Japanese filmmakers. They're also polar opposites within the context of Japanese cinema, so it is worthwhile and good to compare them in particular.
the amount of clarity you bring to this topic is amazing ..and doing so without using cliches like "perspectives" while describing rashomon ...pls review Ikiru...
I liked your video, although I only learnt about Tokyo Story from you having only seen Rashomon. Thank you. I am pondering on whether to watch Tokyo Story or not.
or maybe it was the church scene in "werenesle sunrise" ???? that American accent I can't understand. You need to enunciate more clearly. Or perhaps include subtitles
Sad and transient beauty. Yet a fulness in emergent moments Ineffable challenge of understanding the human heart through individual characters Feminine and Masculine stories: Interweaving of private affairs and public stage of action Personal and cultural imperfection in life yet a universal message at once
so far a director's movie is made by his own nature, his choices are simply natural. It wouldn't make sense trying to imitate other directors just because they did great movies. they did great movies because they were themselves, as any other director should just be himself
