Yasujiro Ozu Film One: Good Morning (1959)



I had never seen a Yasujiro Ozu film, including his oft-mentioned classic, Tokyo Story (1953), when I watched this movie a couple of years ago. I started with Good Morning (1959) because I figured a comedy would be a good place to start and felt the premise of Tokyo Story to be somewhat daunting. It made me excited to see more examples of his famous "pillow shots," where Ozu cuts away from the narrative to focus on a landscape, an empty room, or a household item, and build his world. This interest in Ozu's framing was only a starting point because now I plan on watching his entire filmography for narrative as well as cinematography and everything else that makes his mise-en-scene and ideas so enjoyable. I will write about fifteen of them for the blog and rank them. 

One of his later comedies, Good Morning examines how two young boys challenge their parents' rules because they want them to buy a television to watch Sumo matches. As with most of Ozu's ouevre, the film uses this humorous premise to tackle notions of class, family connection, and the changing nature of Japanese society. A loose remake of the director's 1932 silent film, I Was Born, But, the film reworks that film's themes to explore the role of newer technology and revisit assumptions about the nuclear family. 

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