Ozu Yasujirō
Ozu Yasujirō ( Japanese 小 津 安二郎 ; * December 12, 1903 in Fukagawa, Tokyo (today: Kōtō -ku); † December 12, 1963 in Tokyo ) was a Japanese director and screenwriter . While he remained practically unknown outside his country during his lifetime, many critics and directors today consider him one of the greatest film directors of all time. The themes of family, marriage and generation conflicts were often at the center of his films, and in many cases he also addressed the changes in Japanese society and the associated effects.
Life
Ozu was the second son of a fertilizer dealer. Both father and mother came from rich families. In addition to an older one, he had a younger brother and two younger sisters.
Ozu lived in Tokyo until he was ten. The family then moved to Matsusaka , the father's birthplace, where he was initially a student at Uji Yamada Middle School. However, he was expelled from boarding school for insubordination and bad behavior related to his alcoholism.
After failing the high school entrance examination, he worked for a short time as a substitute teacher in a mountain village near Matsusaka before returning to Tokyo with the entire family in 1923. In the summer of 1923 he entered the Shochiku Film School . He remained loyal to the Shochiku film company throughout his life - a typical Japanese employer-employee relationship.
He began his film career as a cameraman and later assistant director before making his first film, Zange no yaiba ( The Sword of Remorse ), in 1927. 53 more films followed, 26 of them in his first five years as a director. Only 37 films have survived to this day. First he produced comedies, before he turned to more social topics from 1930, with a focus on family drama. His best-known pre-war films are: I Was Born But… (1932) and A Hostel in Tokyo (1935). He made his only documentary in 1936; Kagami jishi was set to music using the Tsuchihashi tone system.
During World War II he was a soldier in mainland China , then still the Republic of China .
In Tales of a Neighbor (1947), his first film after the war, Ozu dealt with the social upheavals after the defeat; this problem was also reflected a year later in A Chicken in the Wind . His films gained greater popularity in the 1950s. His best-known work is The Journey to Tokyo from 1953. Other well-known films are The Taste of Green Tea Over Rice (1952), Early Spring (1956), Good Morning , Farewell in the Twilight (both 1959) and Late Autumn (1960) . His last film was An Autumn Afternoon (1962).
Ozu remained unmarried and lived with his widowed mother. He died on his 60th birthday after a long illness with cancer and was buried in the cemetery of the Engaku-ji temple in Kamakura .
Style and influence
As a director, Ozu was considered eccentric and perfectionist. He was considered the "most Japanese" filmmaker, and his films were rarely shown outside of Japan before 1960. It was not until 1936 that he started using the sound film with The Only Son ; Summer Blossoms from 1958 was his first color film . Until the last film he only shot in color, so there are six color films in a row. The most prominent stylistic features of his films are the predominant camera position, which is sometimes used alone in late works, which corresponds to the perspective of a person crouching on the floor, as well as the “vistas” in traditional Japanese houses. The actors often speak directly into the camera during dialogues. Between individual scenes, Ozu sometimes shows still lifes with vases and teapots or buildings. He worked a lot with the screenwriter Koga Noda. Other steady partners were the cameraman Yuhara Atsuta and the actress Setsuko Hara . Since his second film, Ozu worked with the actor Chishū Ryū . He then starred in all of the films except What did the lady forget? .
Ozu's works only became known outside of Japan late, and he remained unknown to the general public. Many cineastes and filmmakers, however, value him as one of the greatest masters. His stylistic influence is unmistakable in the works of western directors such as Alain Resnais , Rainer Werner Fassbinder , Aki Kaurismäki , Jim Jarmusch , Richard Linklater or Doris Dörrie , but also of younger Japanese directors such as Takeshi Kitano . Wim Wenders made the documentary Tokyo-Ga about Ozu.
Filmography
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literature
- Andreas Becker: Yasujiro Ozu, the Japanese cultural world and western film, Bielefeld: transcript 2020, ISBN 978-3-8376-4372-5 .
- David Bordwell : Ozu and the poetics of cinema. Princeton, NJ: Univ. Pr. 1988, full text
- Donald Richie : Ozu. University of California Press, Los Angeles 1974.
- Stefan Braun, Fritz Göttler, Claus M. Reimer, Klaus Volkmer (Eds.): Ozu Yasujiro , KinoKonTexte 1, Munich 1981.
- Harry Tomicek, Peter Konlechner (ed.): Ozu - The taste of bitter tea, blossoms in the valley . Filmmuseum, Vienna 1988, ISBN 978-3-901104-00-8 .
- Henrik Schlottmann: The 'empty' images in Yasujiro Ozu's films. Diplomica, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-8324-3085-7 .
Web links
- Literature by and about Ozu Yasujirō in the catalog of the German National Library
- Ozu Yasujirō in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Ozu-san.com - News and resources
- Walt R. Vian on the narrator (PDF; 1.5 MB) and stylists (PDF; 2.2 MB) Ozu - two essays in FILMBULLETIN
- Jump Cut - review series for the retrospective at Kino Arsenal ( Berlin ).
- Roger Ebert - essay on the retrospective in Chicago .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ozu, Yasujirō |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | 小 津 安二郎 (Japanese) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Japanese film director and screenwriter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 12, 1903 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Fukagawa, Tokyo |
| DATE OF DEATH | December 12, 1963 |
| Place of death | Tokyo |