Watch Passing Fancy For Free

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

What a freaking movie. So many twists and turns. Absolutely intense from start to finish.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

In Passing Fancy we can see Yasujiro Ozu edging, however reluctantly, toward sound. For a silent movie it has an extraordinary number of intertitles, reflecting a stronger reliance on dialogue to carry the story and the relationships of the characters. Ozu even departs from convention on occasion to show a title card before the character has spoken the line. The film also shows more of the development of Ozu's personal style as a director than some of his contemporary silent films do: There's a greater reliance on low-angle camera-work, his so- called "tatami shots," and a more frequent use of shots of streets and buildings that don't necessarily carry information about the plot and characters but serve as something like "chapter breaks" in the narrative. But film technique aside, Passing Fancy would be remembered as one of Ozu's most charming early films. Takeshi Sakamoto plays Kihachi -- a character name the actor would retain in other films by Ozu, including A Story of Floating Weeds (1934) and An Inn in Tokyo (1935). The several characters are discrete from one another, although the Kihachi in Passing Fancy bears some resemblance to the one in An Inn in Tokyo in that they are both single parents of a son played by the marvelous child actor Tomio Aoki. (If you're not confused yet, let me also add that in Passing Fancy Aoki is billed as "Tokkan Kozo," the title of a 1929 Ozu short film based on O. Henry's "The Ransom of Red Chief" in which Aoki appeared. Oh, and that in Passing Fancy, the character is named Tomio.) Anyway, Kihachi and Tomio share rundown lodgings with Jiro (Den Obinata), who works with Kihachi in a brewery. Tomio is a good student, and he's a bit embarrassed by his illiterate and occasionally drunken father. One night, Kihachi and Jiro encounter a young woman, Harue (Nobuko Fushimi), who has just been fired from her job and is looking for a place to stay. Jiro is suspicious that Harue is "no better than she ought to be," as the saying goes, but Kihachi is smitten with her and arranges for her to live with and work for Otome (Choko Iida), a woman who owns a neighborhood bar-restaurant. Kihachi begins to spruce himself up to woo Harue, but she's more attracted to the younger and handsomer Jiro. Eventually, Otome persuades Kihachi that he's too old for Harue and that he should try to get Jiro to return her affections. Then Tomio falls ill and, following the familiar sick-child motif of many Japanese films in the 1930s, Kihachi is pressed to find a way to pay the doctor bills. Ozu's generous humor and genuine affection for his characters suffuses the film, and the splendid rapport of Sakamoto and Aoki as actors provides a special insight into the often volatile father-son relationship. There's a wonderful scene, for example, in which Kihachi slaps Tomio once too often and the boy turns around and begins to pummel his father, who submits, resulting in a deeper understanding between them. The screenplay is by Tadao Ikeda, from a story by Ozu under his pseudonym James Maki. The cinematographers are Hideo Shigehara and Shojiro Sugimoto. (charlesmatthews.blogspot.com)

Another early Ozu where family ties - severely tested but affirmed - steer the world away from havoc and into good. Another early Ozu that documents Japanese society being pushed through the wringer of Western influence, cinematically reflected with Chaplinesque beats: the father is a lazy factory worker and no good man-about-town, in stark contrast to the meek, corporate executive father in I Was Born But.., and once more the stubborn son has to live with the shame.This go round and in comparison to the above film, the intended seduction of suburban life is less effective. The innocence of childhood is less the fulcrum of discovery of how the world works, and more a counterpoint to ordinary drama; thwarted love, strained friendship, high-minded sacrifice in the end that seduces noble, better persons out of everyone.Everything turns out the way it does for a reason, the film whimsically asserts. Why is sea water salty? But of course for us to salt salmon with.It is good and was awarded that year with a Kinema Jumpo beating films by future rivals Mizoguchi and Naruse. I assume it won for the denouement of selfless humanity - inspirationally miraculous and accompanied by fireworks in the sky - that must have echoed desirably at tumultuous times such as those, but there were more interesting things afoot in Japanese cinema of the time.

Ozu has often used the theme of father and son relationships in his films and here he explores a little more besides. Beyond the relationship of Kihachi the father and Tomio the young son you get the widower Kihachi trying to become closer to the pretty, much younger Harue. This silent film speaks volumes about family, about hopes but it is Ozu's light comic touch which makes it another great film of his. It is completely silent but it is compelling, actually a story that could be retold and remade in any corner of the globe. The acting is just about universally good and the film has a lot of heart attached to its sometimes ordinary theme. Then again, Ozu has always made extraordinary out of the ordinary. Here is another example of the master at work.

Dekigokoro (Passing Fancy), is one of Ozu's 3 masterpieces from 1933. It stars the second of cinematic Ozu's "alter egos", Takeshi Sakamoto. Sakamoto typically plays a down and out working class father. Here, he is especially dense, to excellent comic effect. Tomio Aoki (in probably his most significant child role) plays a kid who seems to be considerably brighter than his father -- and who does more to keep the household running. Aoki is (of course) quite funny. But he also does an excellent job of showing a child's response to unwanted change. He and his father have long depended solely on each other -- but now his father has his eye on a young woman who has moved into their slum neighborhood. Aoki very much resents his father's interest in the woman -- and resists her attempts to win his affections.This is an extremely visual film, with lots of completely "wordless" humor. The film starts out with an extended scene in a music hall (Chishu Ryu performing as the "singer") in which first a lost wallet circulates, and then a flea (or fleas). Probably not as great a family drama as the prior "I Was Born But" or the subsequent "Tokyo Inn", but nonetheless quite enjoyable.