Great Directors: Yasujiro Ozu

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The crown jewel in Ozu's career is widely regarded as being Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari, 1953). It consistently makes all-time top ten film lists around the world along with Citizen Kane, Rules Of the Game and Vertigo. It is Ozu's sad, simple story of generational conflict where an elderly couple's visit to their busy, self-absorbed offspring in Tokyo is met with indifference. This ingratitude only serves to reveal permanent emotional differences, which the parents gracefully accept and then return home. It is in Tokyo Story where Ozu's form reaches its zenith. The apparent lack of plot (not of story, but of story events) is replaced by a series of moments which have a cumulative effect, and of ellipses. David Desser highlighted the different kinds of ellipses in Tokyo Story, identifying them as follows. “Minor ellipsis” denotes the dropping of a minor plot event – for example, a character discusses sending their parents on holiday and the next shot shows the parents on holiday (Ozu having elided scenes where the parents are persuaded to go on holiday). “Surprise ellipsis” can be demonstrated by Ozu preparing the viewer for a scene and then simply eliding the whole event for effect – a risky strategy, as the greater the ellipsis the more alert the viewer must be. Finally, “dramatic ellipsis” is concerned with the offscreen occurrence of something dramatic, which the viewer only hears about later – for example, the sudden illness of the mother that we only hear about secondhand. Ozu maintains the mood and tone without needing to portray the events that he is eliding (unlike classical Hollywood cinema which would, generally, base itself around the things that Ozu leaves out). Indeed, the ellipses convolve and dictate the pace of the film. Ozu's examination of the slow fracturing of the Japanese family in Tokyo Story is filled with quiet resignation, a neverending acceptance and the realization that tradition is subject to change.

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Senses of Cinema is an online journal devoted to the serious and eclectic discussion of cinema. We believe cinema is an art that can take many forms, from the industrially-produced blockbuster to the hand-crafted experimental work; we also aim to encourage awareness of the histories of such diverse forms. As an Australian-based journal, we have a special commitment to the regular, wide-ranging analysis and critique of Australian cinema, past and present. Senses of Cinema is primarily concerned with ideas about particular films or bodies of work, but also with the regimes (ideological, economic and so forth) under which films are produced and viewed, and with the more abstract theoretical and philosophical issues raised by film study.