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the audience applauded

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Being a fan of Ozu, you see here all the elements of his film making: The long shots, the trains, the interaction of family members etc. Kind of a precursor to the superior "Late Spring", this story revolves around a father and son's relationship. He works hard to get his son through school, so he can have a better life. However, they are not in the same place, so they do not see each other all that often. The film spans several years, in which the son goes from a young boy to a man. Chishu Ryu, who has starred in many Ozu films, is the father. Of course, he is great, he always is. Since the mother passed before the film even started, the boy only has the father, and their relationship is the heart of this film. A good to almost very good film, it was shown, appropriately enough, on Fathers Day on Turner Classic Movies. If you like Ozu, you'll want to see this. If you're new to him, check out the films with Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara, as well as his swan song "Autumn Afternoon" and even "I Was Born, But" before watching this. I liked it, it was a nice film. Its another worthy Ozu film, in a career that had so many of them.

What would be your perfect death? After an evening out with friends you suddenly are taken ill the following morning, living just long enough to deliver a perfectly honed homily from your hospital bed before slipping peacefully away. It doesn't usually happen like that, of course, but in this Ozu film it appears as the reward for an exemplary life. A widower bringing up his son alone feels obliged to resign from his post as school teacher after the death of a pupil for which he feels responsible. His search for work elsewhere leads to separation from the son even while the latter is still at school. The close bond between them is evoked by shots early and late in the film of their fishing together. These are beautifully economical, the pair framed together from behind. Later when the son himself has become a teacher he wishes to resign his post to be closer to his ageing father who is now a bureaucrat in Tokyo. The father explains to him the importance of dedication to duty as the only path to happiness, a message accepted by the son who is only able to spend a brief time with the father who dies shortly afterwards. As this might suggest it is more simplistic in its morality than later better known films such as 'Tokyo Story'. The poignancy of the film derives from a much simpler conflict between social duty and family ties. This is doubtless partly accountable in terms of the war time context in which the 'good father' would be the one who cheerfully accepted the absence and possible death of his sons. Nonetheless a certain psychological complexity is permitted. The father blames himself for the death of the student in a boating accident on his failure to exert proper authority. However what we see is his involvement in a game of 'Go' which distracts his attention while the boys disobey his instructions not to go boating. Lack of competence and authority he can confront. Neglect of duty he cannot. At the time of writing (August 2005) a pretty dreadful copy of this is drawing very respectable audiences in a Paris cinema. It is certainly a moving experience but its problematic political subtext should not be ignored.

Another sober wartime drama, this time a sort of reworking of THE ONLY SON as a widower schoolteacher decides to send his boy to a boarding school to give him the best education possible and seek a higher paying position to afford tuition. The film takes a sudden leap forward in time as the grown son desires to take care of his aging father, but the father forbids the son to compromise his own career. The war is barely mentioned but the film can easily be read as a propagandistic statement about self-sacrifice and devotion to duty, even at the cost of family unity. However, the pensive, tentative mood Ozu captures at the end, embodied in the son's distant, troubled look as he thinks about his father, hints at Ozu's own reservations with the moral message being issued. The scenes of father and son together in both halves of the story have a gentle perfection that gives the film all the beauty it requires, thanks to great performances by Shuji Sano as the grown son and Chishyu Ryo as the father. Amazingly, Ryu was only 38 when he gave this totally believable performance as an aging patriarch -- in fact he barely looks any different than he does in AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON twenty years later!

unavoidable spoilersThe second of Ozu's war-era films -- and the first to feature Chishu Ryu as "star". This film starts with the story of a teacher and his young son (in the 1920s). After one of the students under Ryu's care drowns on a school outing (after disobeying orders), Ryu resigns as a teacher due to his "failure". Ryu and his son then must split up, the son to go to middle school and Ryu to go to Tokyo to pay for his son's education. Even when the son (now played by Shuji Sano) is grown -- and teaching in an agricultural college -- the two remain separated (except for very rare, very short visits) due to Ryu's fanatic devotion to duty, an attitude he presses on his son as well. This film has typically been viewed as supporting the Japanese government's promotion of hierarchical paternalism. But, frankly Ryu's rigidity seems a bit "over the top" -- and, in the final moments of the film, it seems that his son (now just married to the daughter of Ryu's best friend from his teaching days) may not accept the concept that duty requires the squelching of all emotional ties.