Yasujiro Ozu

[Stefan Andersson]

Two new Ozu books, French-language, published in October 2023 by Carlotta Films.

Relevant quote:
"In Yasujiro Ozu: une affaire de famille, the Japanese film expert Pascal-Alex Vincent considers his filmography in which the theme of family is at the heart and to which his own Ozu-gumi (the Ozu clan) was essential. The second book offers another look at the oft-neglected turbulence, whether professionally, intimately or in the family, which Ozu had to face in his life. Complementing Carlotta’s 2020 reissue of Carnets d’Ozu (Ozu’s Diaries), Ozu, hors-champs is a translation of the 2013 biography of the filmmaker written by the Japanese journalist Térui Yasuo. His knowledge of the extensive bibliography devoted to Ozu in Japan offers new information to non-Japanese readers."

Source:
https://sabzian.be/news/new-book-releases-winter-2024

[Stefan Andersson]

Good reference materials:
http://www.a2pcinema.com/ozu-san/ozu.htm

[Matt]

If one can read French, Shigehiko Hasumi's book on Ozu (published in translation by Cahiers du Cinema) offers some pretty useful criticisms of the way most Western critics have interpreted Ozu's films (he seems to be least harsh with Bordwell).

This is now available in an English translation.

[Michael Kerpan]

Matt -- I haven't gotten Ryan's translation yet (very excited to see this is coming out this month). (disclaimer -- Ryan Cook and Aaron Gerow are long-time friends of mine).

[Matt]

The Munekata Sisters - who knows what's going on with this? supposedly owned by Toho but it's basically the one surviving film not on the Criterion channel, also the only surviving film I haven't seen

making its channel debut on 01 December.

I finally caught up with this, also (I think) my last unseen extant Ozu. I thought it might be a minor work, but it wasn’t! Maybe it suffers in reputation from falling smack in the middle of the Noriko trilogy, but it’s a great exploration of the tension between tradition and modernity in postwar Japan as embodied in the two sisters (the responsibly married but unhappy Kinuyo Tanaka and Hideko Takamine, her Coke-drinking bratty younger sister). I happened to watch it as part of an unintentional double feature with Tanaka’s own Love Letter which explores a similar theme (as well as the shared theme of women struggling to overcome decisions they made in younger, more carefree days). The Tanaka, while obviously under the influence of Ozu, is almost a neorealist film* in comparison and, like many Naruse films, much more concerned with its characters’ economic survival than Ozu.

*There’s a cool sequence that follows a character through the streets of the busy city shot among the actual crowds and traffic that is almost Rossellini-esque.

[Michael Kerpan]

Munekata Sisters has always been one of my least favorite Ozu films -- but maybe if I watch it with proper subtitles I will feel differently. My main problem was always that it felt MUCH more "talky" than the average Ozu film (and Ozu WAS required to follow the source story -- a newly published popular novel --much more tightly than was his norm).

[tenia]

Does anybody here knows if Floating Weeds should have a color-grading similar to The End of Summer ?
My understanding is that the 4K resto of Floating Weeds has this now-quite specific grading (very pale green with red sticking out visibly) because it was shot on Agfacolor (1) and Ozu and Miyagawa wanted to attenuate every color except red (2).

The new 4k restoration of The End of Summer brings the movie quite close to that, and aside from the other 4K/2K Ozu restoration (An Autumn Afternoon, Late Autumn, Equinox Flower, etc), but I'm quite surprised by this, as it seemed to me, so far, that the look of Floating Weeds was supposed to be very specific to that movie, and thus fail to understand why The End of Summer should look like this too.

A few examples :
https://testsblurayfr.files.wordpress.c ... r-2024.jpg
https://testsblurayfr.files.wordpress.c ... r-2024.jpg
https://testsblurayfr.files.wordpress.c ... r-2024.jpg
https://testsblurayfr.files.wordpress.c ... r-2024.jpg

Also : the very early night shot of the billboards seems to me to have been artificially re-done. I doubt the difference in sharpness is due to the youth of the new master or has been obtained via traditional filtering tools.
Previous master : https://testsblurayfr.files.wordpress.c ... r-2020.jpg
New master : https://testsblurayfr.files.wordpress.c ... r-2024.jpg

[Michael Kerpan]

With all previous versions of End of Summer that I know of, the predominant palette has been full of very rich golds, browns and reds -- a rather unique look compared to other Ozu films. On the other hand, the dominant tones one notices in Floating Weeds were the rich blues. Both these seem to me to have had a different palette from the Shochiku Ozu films -- despite using the same film type.

[tenia]

I too have never seen the movie looking like this, and it's interesting to see it's now close to a different movie whose new restoration has a look similar to it. It's hard not to wonder what happened, but on the other hand, I always felt like Ozu's color movies have been graded differently with every single of their restorations.

[Michael Kerpan]

Going back to an old HK VCD of End of Summer (probably based on a Shochiku release print or the like), this has always had roughly the same distinctive look from the other Ozu films. Perhaps all those earlier versions were wrong -- but they were so beautiful I prefer to doubt it.