Fri 13 at 8:00 Morton 235

Good Morning (Ohayo)

Japan, 1959, 93 mins, DVD
Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Cast: Keiji Sada, Yoshiko Kuga, Chisu Ryhu


The wildcard in Yasujiro Ozu's career, the film that looks least like all his others, and one of the few where he sees the world through children's eyes rather than those of an old man. For many years, ozu's films were rarely seen outside Japan. Their minimal narratives and idiosyncratic style resembled few other films, and distributors feared they were "too japanese" for international audiences. During the 1950s and 1960s, most of his work centered around the same motif: the attempt by an aging parent to marry off a dutiful daughter so that she could begin to live her own life. But with Good Morning, a nominal remake of his 1932 silent I Was Born, But..., Ozu visits suburbia. He plunks us down into a new Japan, a bright, peppy place where American cultural influences have seeped into everyday life. Short to follow: Charlie Chaplin Revue

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