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Yasujiro Ozu: the Syntax of His Films Author(S): Donald Richie Source: Film Quarterly, Vol

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Yasujiro Ozu: the Syntax of His Films Author(S): Donald Richie Source: Film Quarterly, Vol Yasujiro Ozu: The Syntax of His Films Author(s): Donald Richie Source: Film Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Winter, 1963-1964), pp. 11-16 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1210862 Accessed: 17-10-2017 15:09 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Film Quarterly This content downloaded from 147.251.99.131 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 15:09:17 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 11 DONALD RICHIE Yasujiro Ozu: The Syntax of His Films In the Autumn issue of Sight and Sound, Tom Milne surveys Ozu's work on the basis of a series of films recently seen in London. Five Ozu films will shortly tour the United States (Late Spring, Tokyo Story, Early Spring, Good Morning, and Late Autumn) and the following stylistic analysis explicates some of the methods we will soon be able to observe in these pictures. With Ozu, as with Antonioni or Resnais, the a film as a carpenter makes a house. The fin- critic may speak of grammar, of vocabulary, of ished object one may measure, one may in- syntax-something which one cannot do with spect, one may compare. But within this object, Mizoguchi, with Bergman, or even with Truf- as within the house, lives the human, the faut, intuitive directors all. Ozu is not an in- immeasurable, the nonfunctional. It is this tuitive film artist, he is a master craftsman; for combination of the static and the living, of him, film is not expression but function. In an form and content, which makes the films of Ozu film, as in Japanese architecture, you can Ozu the compelling emotional experiences they see all the supports, and each support is as are and, at the same time, the wonderfully necessary as any other. He uses neither paint hand-tooled containers which they also are. nor wallpaper; he uses natural wood. He makes The opening funeral scene in AxxBronR (Setsuko Hara, Yoko Tsukasa, and ~?s- Ryu Chishu) -;;;- I~ I ~wa~psli~e~s~n~ ~ n: ai-? d 8' p ~1? This content downloaded from 147.251.99.131 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 15:09:17 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 12 I OZU GRAMMAR apprehendable, and perhaps for the more Ozu, like Antonioni, knows that plot is worth- metaphysical reason of its being circular: a less because it is manipulated. It is life used balanced, continuous geometrical form con- and consequently untrue: life must at least genial to the human mind. The sequence in appear to be gratuitous to appear true. Anton- Ozu is the paragraph (the Ozu film has no ioni believes that "the episode is the only fit "chapters") and within these paragraphs the unit for film" and this Ozu too believes-with shot becomes the "sentence." the difference that he believed it thirty years STRUCTURE before Antonioni did. For this reason, though Just as the sequence in Ozu is circular, so is the chronicle of an Ozu picture is fairly the basic form of the entire picture. It would straightforward, you cannot make a pr6cis. be difficult to find an Ozu film that did not Everything Ozu-like evaporates if you merely end where it began-though such an atypical tell the story, for the reason that story (or, picture would be Soshun (Early Spring more often, merely anecdote) is but a pretext 1956). Often, indeed, this effect of form for the film, the real reason for which is reve- becomes "formal," even-in the best sense- lation of character. Ozu therefore restricts mannered. The neighbor lady appears twice content (a plot is an indulgence-it is too in Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari-1953), easy) and, in the same way, he restricts his once in the first reel, and once in the last. In technique: hence his celebrated avoidance of the first the old couple is preparing their trip these elements of film grammar which other and she comments upon it; in the last reel the directors find indispensable. Dissolves are wife is dead, the husband will remain where "cheating"; fades are "merely attributes of the he is alone (the opposite certainly of travel) camera"; dollies, pans, etc., are "uninterest- and this too she obliquely comments upon. ing." The only punctuation which Ozu allows Ohayo: (Good Morning-1959) like its an- himself is the simple cut; the only camera cestor, Umareta a Mita Keredo, (I was Born, position, that of the person seated upon tata- But . .. (-1932) ends precisely where it mi, his eyes about three feet from floor level, began and the adventures of the little boys the traditional attitude for talking, for watch- (very meaningful in the latter film; merely ing, for listening. He allows himself three comic in the former) count for nothing other kinds of shots-the classical three of primitive than the emotional experience which they give cinema. (1) The long shot is used to show us. In most Ozu films the structure presumes solitude, precisely because it isolates; or hu- this "return" and it is this which makes the mor, for it isolates and makes apprehendable; final reels of these pictures so compelling. The or aesthetic beauty, because it gets us far idea of the "return" (like the idea of the cir- enough from it to see it all. (2) The middle cle) is something which all of us find emo- shot, the standard unit of the Ozu film, is the tionally compelling-a somewhat common, if "business" unit during which most of the ac- not vulgar, example of its great filmic effect is tion occurs. (3) The close-up, used for height- in the two celebrated 180 pans (before and ened moments, either with or without dia- after Micheline Presle's death) in Le Diable logue, is used rarely and never allowed to au Corps. Musically, it is more instantly appre- enlarge itself into the "big" close-up. Each hendable. The master of the "return" is shot has its place within the sequence and the Mozart, because of the freshness, the surprise, order of the sequence is usually 1 - 2 - 3 - 2 - the astonishing "newness" of the sound when 1. Musically, it is the a-b-a pattern, simple he completes the return in a rondo. For one binary form, one of the most immediate and thing we are back in the home key, always a satisfying formal experiences possible, through grateful feeling; and for another we return reason (in films as in music) of its being firmly home (as in the finale of the Jupiter) doubly This content downloaded from 147.251.99.131 on Tue, 17 Oct 2017 15:09:17 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 13 OZU enriched; we are surprised by the new beauty the city, many more workers going into a of the familiar. The formal parallel to Ozu is larger station; and, the third, Tokyo Station precise because the effect is never merely for- itself, with literally thousands of men going to mal, the "return" is not contrived (as it is all their offices. Thus we are bodily moved and at too often in the pictures of, say, John Hus- the same time are shown something relevant ton), nor is it for its own effect (as in Carn6), to the ethos of the film, which is concerned an aestheticism for its own sake. Rather, with with the anonymous life of one of these work- true art, that art which hides art, Ozu tri- ers. It is telling, too, that in these three shots umphs in making this necessary formal device Ozu deliberately chose for the second a loca- appear natural. Perhaps the main reason for tion which is actually in a direct line from the this is that the structure of the Ozu film first location. It would be possible to see this appears so logical-there is a definite reason if you yourself actually took the train trip. for each shot. Even in Antonioni (who Ozushort- never lies about geography, unlike any ened L'Avventura himself) shots and sequen- other film director now alive. The taxi-ride in ces may be removed. Remove one shot thefrom first reel of Ochazuke no Aji (The Flavor an Ozu picture and you damage it irreparably. of Green Tea Over Rice-1952) is literal, the The logic which controls the structure visual is re- continuity outside the window is just as sponsible for this. Take, for example, it reallythe would be; the train-ride to Tokyo in extremely logical way which Ozu will move the openingus reels of Banshun is chronologi- from one sequence to another. He feels cally it accurate; so is the hiking trip in Soshun important that we keep our bearings, that -first we the island of Enoshima in the back- do not get lost. In Akibiyori (Late Autumn- ground and then Ozu computes his time and 1960), as in most Ozu films, there is, forat the the next shots the walkers are passing the beginning of a sequence, a "still" shot showing oddly-shaped rock which only a person famil- either the location (the bridge) or the iarplace, with this coast would know is precisely the wall on which there is a picture whereof a he shows it to be.
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