The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice

[MichaelB]

Full specs announced:

The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice
Directed by Yasujirô Ozu

See a clip here.

Blu-ray/DVD release on 18 May 2020 and simultaneously available to stream or buy via iTunes and Amazon Prime. On BFI Player from 5 June 2020 within a collection of 25 Yasujirô Ozu films released on BFI Player’s Subscription service as part of JAPAN 2020, a major new BFI season launching this month.

Yasujirô Ozu’s films use minimalist storytelling and an emphasis on character to paint a portrait of family life and the relationships between the generations. Made the year before his career defining masterpiece Tokyo Story (which will be released on Blu-ray by the BFI on 15 June) The Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice is one of Yasujirô Ozu’s most beautiful domestic sagas, a subtly piercing portrait of a marriage coming quietly undone.

Secrets and deceptions strain the already tenuous relationship of a childless, middle aged couple, as the wife’s city bred sophistication clashes with the husband’s small town simplicity, and a generational sea change in the form of their headstrong, modern niece sweeps over their household. Ozu’s expert grasp of family dynamics receives one of its most spirited treatments, with a wry, tender humour and an expansiveness that moves the action from the home, to the baseball stadiums and the shops of post-war Tokyo.

Special features
• Re-mastered at 4K and presented in High Definition for the first time in the UK
• Feature-length audio commentary by critic and Asian-cinema expert Tony Rayns
• Alternative unrestored audio track
• The Mystery of Marriage (1932, 34 mins): educational filmmaker and pioneering female director Mary Field draws peculiar and poignant parallels between the mating rituals of humans, animals and mould in this eccentric, entertaining educational film
• The Good Housewife ‘In Her Kitchen’ (1949, 9 mins): the fourth wall is shattered in this imaginative public information film, filled with good advice for kitchen users – whether they have a refrigerator or not
• *** First pressing only*** Illustrated booklet with an extended archival essay by Tom Milne, notes on the special features and credits

Product details
RRP: £19.99 / Cat. no. BFIB1379/ U
Japan / 1952 / black and white / 116 minutes / Japanese language, with English subtitles / original aspect ratio 1.33:1 / Disc 1: BD50, 1080p, 24fps, PCM 1.0 mono audio (48kHz/24-bit) / DVD9: PAL 25fps, Dolby Digital 1.0 mono audio (192kbps)

[tenia]

• Alternative unrestored audio track

Glad to see they managed to include it !

[domino harvey]

These random tangential BFI extras are like their Warner Night at the Movies

[knives]

And I love them for that.

[GoodOldNeon]

Excellent. I was on the fence about triple-dipping just for the Tony Rayns commentary, but now the alternative audio track has sealed the deal.

[EddieLarkin]

• Alternative unrestored audio track

Fantastic news. I hope other labels take note and appreciate that issues like these are not uncommon, and that soundtracks should be checked against older versions as a matter of course. Moshrom's blog is a great resource but why should amateurs have to do all the work (The BFI should take a look at his page on Tokyo Story in prep for that release)? The worst offenders though are labels like Criterion who actively aim to destroy a soundtrack's natural sound even further than the restorers often present them.

[Michael Kerpan]

I remember how stubborn Criterion was when it came to proper (or best possible) color balancing of the Ozu films once upon a time....

[colinr0380]

Very nice to see the nutty, free associational The Mystery of Marriage upgraded to Blu-ray, as that was one of the shorts on the Joy of Sex Eduction/Birds and the Bees DVD from over a decade ago.

[AidanKing]

While the extra features are obviously welcome, it seems a shame that the BFI hasn't included any more of the so far unreleased Ozu films that were announced several years ago, but I expect that there is no likelihood of these being made available now unfortunately.

[longstone]

Well, this is the first time the BFI have released Flavour of Green Tea Over Rice I think, so it's one of their unreleased films , maybe there is a slim hope of some more titles .

[Cash Flagg]

I doubt it - they’re just using the (horribly sharpened) pre-existing Criterion master. I personally found the digital manipulation tremendously distracting (it reminded me of Universal’s equally dire Wolfman [1941]), but at least BFI are including the original audio track, which is a big plus.

[Drucker]

I'm sorry--you're saying the BFI...is or is not derived from the same master Criterion released recently?

[tenia]

My understanding is that they're indeed using the new 4k restoration of the movie, recently released on BD by Criterion and Carlotta.
Though it's digitally filtered too.

[Cash Flagg]

My understanding is that they're indeed using the new 4k restoration of the movie, recently released on BD by Criterion and Carlotta.
Though it's digitally filtered too.

Yes, you can clearly see in the clip included in the first post. A real shame - none of the other Ozu releases look like that. I was hoping BFI would at least have included one of the orphaned films in SD, but I'll still double-dip for the Rayns commentary and the audio.

[Michael Kerpan]

All prior editions of Green Tea have looked pretty terrible. Clearly the best source materials were (considerably) worse than those of Tokyo Story (and other Ozu films of that period). Image-wise, whatever the flaws, the new restoration still looks quite a bit better than what we had before. No excuse for messing up the sound, however. Not sure why Shochiku is consistently messing up on this.

[tenia]

Part of the results come from the source, but it's quite obvious there is an un-natural tampered-with look that has nothing to do with the state of the materials used.
Sections of Late Spring have also most likely been digitally filtered. And possibly though very slightly parts of Early Summer (though personnally, I found this one quite beautiful overall and really had to look for tampering to find it).

I don't know why Shochiku keep messing with the sound, though. My guess is that they're filtering hiss through a heavy low-pass filter that is way too strong/wide. I'd tend to think they're treating hiss like film-grain used to be treated with DNR (it's high frequencies in both cases). The worst is that hiss can still be found in many of those restorations anyway, so the sound got screwed up but the main target still hasn't been eliminated. It's frustratingly counter-productive.

[Michael Kerpan]

The previous versions I've seen of Green Tea (prints and DVDs) all looked pretty "thin" -- no blacks or whites, just a limited range of middle grays.

[Orlac]

Can't have helped that Japanese video transfers often had different video levels.

[Michael Kerpan]

In terms of contrast and general appearance (as opposed to actual damage and deteriooration), Green Tea was one of the worst looking films in Shochiku's 100th anniversary set (and definitely the worst looking post-war film).

[tenia]

I don't know why the need was felt to filter digitally this one more visibly than the other B&W movies. I mean, in the final result, there is nothing visible that seems to explain material deterioration or the use of an element too many generations away from the OCN.

[Michael Kerpan]

Not sure either (and if it could have looked better I wish it had) -- but I would still rather watch the new version than any of its predecessors. And I wish I knew why Green Tea started out so marginal in the first place.

[AidanKing]

I also noticed that the translation on the excerpt from the new disc is subtly different from that on the old Tartan DVD. For example, the fish who resembles the uncle is called 'Mr Bonehead' on the new BFI disc while, on the old Tartan, he is 'dull-san'. I think I like the latter better, but I don't know whether it is more accurate!

[otis]

The Beaver of Green Tea Over Rice

[Rayon Vert]

The Flavour of Green Beaver Over Rice would have made more sense.

[tenia]

I have to slightly rephrased my impressions on this restored soundtrack : it doesn't sound like you're listening to it underwater, but it rather feels like a tiny radio recording. The unrestored track is indeed quite hissy and dialogues can be rough at times, but it feels so livelier and full compared to it, I can't see myself recommanding the restored track over it despite its obvious better cleanliness.
It really feels as if the hiss was removed detrimentally to pretty much everything else, just like those waxy movies because of extreme use of DNR.