Word: yasujiro
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...climbs a small-scale Mt. Fuji replica. With few words spoken you must piece together the "story," such as it is, almost entirely from the visuals. In its emphasis on quiet, low-key activities and cutaways to environmental details, "The Walking Man" evokes the atmosphere of the films of Yasujiro Ozu ("Tokyo Story," "Early Spring," etc.) But the comparison goes no further than the work's mutual tone. Ozu's movies involve rich characters struggling with complex conflicts. Taniguchi's walking man stays a cipher, exhibiting only the barest hint of complexity. The pleasures of "The Walking Man" are principally...
There have also been productive interferences: The French New Wave loved American film noir; Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story takes off from Leo McCarey; Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo morphed into Sergio Leone’s For a Few Dollars More...
Such was not the case in the country’s earlier, perhaps more xenophobic days. The films of director Yasujiro Ozu, made between 1929 and 1962, were long thought to be too nuanced for the international market. Unlike Kurosawa, whose films featured samurai and other overtly stereotyped Japanese characters and plots, Ozu put his films in a contemporary setting and focused on more universal themes such as youth and aging, or more mundane topics such as the Japanese family dynamic. It wasn’t until the 1970s that theaters started screening his films outside his native country. Until...
...Harvard Film Archive (HFA) screened the first film in a lengthy retrospective of Ozu’s work, which continues through to the beginning of next month, concluding on May 11 with Ozu’s final work, An Autumn Afternoon. The comprehensive retrospective, dubbed “Yasujiro Ozu: A Centennial Celebration,” includes nearly all of Ozu’s work produced in a roughly 30-year period, including 11 of his early silent films...
...Yasujiro Ozu festival finishes up at the HFA, take a chance on this classic 1932 silent, a favorite of knowing Ozuphiles like director Wim Wenders, writer Phillip Lopate and movie critic Donald Richie. Like much Ozu, this film deals with the interplay within a family: raised in the suburbs, kids are bullied by better-off children. The bullies particularly delight in pointing out the father’s middle-management position. In retaliation, the kids become bullies themselves and begin protesting their parents’ mediocrity. The real treat, however, is live Benshi (narrators of silent films) narration by Midori...