Good morning (film)

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Movie
German title Good Morning
Original title お 早 よ う , Ohayō
Country of production Japan
original language Japanese
Publishing year 1959
length 94 minutes
Rod
Director Yasujirō Ozu
script Kōgo Noda ,
Yasujirō Ozu
production Shizuo Yamauchi
music Toshirō Mayuzumi
camera Yūharu Atsuta
occupation

Good Morning ( Japanese お 早 よ う , Ohayō ) is a Japanese film from 1959 by director Yasujirō Ozu . As a film about the beginning of television and its educational conflicts, it occupies a special position in Ozu's work.

action

The film is set in a suburb of Tokyo. The first scene shows a group of students teasing each other and going home.

One plot line of the film is about financial contributions to a local women's association. The women in the neighborhood assume that their contributions have been received by the chairwoman, Ms. Haraguchi (Haruko Sugimura), but she denies it. The women in the neighborhood can imagine that Ms. Haraguchi used the money to buy a new washing machine. Ms. Haraguchi then accuses Ms. Hayashi (Kuniko Miyake) of speaking badly about her. Ms. Hayashi said she gave the money to Haraguchi's mother. Later it turns out that Haraguchi's mother (Miyoshi Eiko), who is quite old and forgetful, forgot to give the money to the daughter. With Ms. Haraguchi's apology, the matter will be closed.

The main story is about the fact that students are enthusiastic about television and that they can watch a sumo tournament that is currently being broadcast from a neighboring family . But the conservative parents forbid it, also because the neighbors are seen as bohemian. This is how the woman should be a cabaret singer.

The boys in the Hayashi family then urge their mother to buy a television herself. But the mother refuses. When the father Hayashi Keitaro (Chishū Ryū) finds out, he urges her to calm down. The older son, Minoru (Shitara Kōji), is upset and says that the adults said empty words like "Good morning" without really meaning anything. The father says the boys should be quiet. Back in their room, the boys decide to shut up and go on a speaking strike. They go to school without saying the usual "good morning" to their neighbors.

The first to be affected is Ms. Haraguchi. She angrily suspects that this is Ms. Hayashi's revenge for the recent misunderstanding. She tells this to the gossip Tomita (Teruko Nagaoka), and the opinion soon arises that Ms. Hayashi is a very resentful person. So all the neighbors go to her and angrily give back borrowed things.

Minoru and younger brother Isamu (Shimazu Masahiko) continue their strike at school, even with their tutor (Keiji Sada) for English. Finally, the director of the school tries to find out from the parents what the reason for the silence of the boys is.

The next day the two boys secretly run away from home with a pot of rice to satiate their hunger outside. But they are surprised by a police officer. They run away and disappear for hours in the evening until the English teacher finds them at a small train station where they happily watched TV.

Then the boys find out that their parents actually bought a television set to help the neighbor (Taiji Tonoyama) with his new job as a salesman. The two end their strike delightedly.

In the final scene you see the English teacher, together with the boys' aunt, waiting for the train on a platform of the suburban train and starting a conversation with her. The content is quite formal, but you can feel the beginning of a closer relationship.

To the movie

Unlike most of Ozu's films, this one is less about the problems of adults and more about the wishes of children in a changing world. The scene structure and camera work, however, is designed in a manner typical of Ozu: a dike takes over the function here for the transverse corridor or the transverse street, with which the scene is otherwise limited.

Ozu allows himself a child-appropriate joke in the first scene, but also later in the film: the children swallow drugs, only to outdo each other in puffing.

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