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Silent Ozu, not silent cinema

posted 17 years ago by trochesset
5 replies | jump to latest

SPOILERS
(1934) A Story of Floating Weeds
Well, let me start by saying that I don't believe that Ozu ever understood cinema, but he did understand emotion and how to tell a story. This is not to insult his pictures, or to say that he wasn't a good filmmaker; but that he somehow made great films that exhibit hardly any of the physical qualities that great films exhibit. You can't judge his films with the same criteria that you would judge most other films. I think the biggest mark against Ozu is his refusal or inability to change or adapt to new ways of making films. He began making films the same year that Metropolis, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The End of St. Petersberg, and Abel Gance's Napoleon debuted, yet he took away seemingly nothing from them.

A Story of Floating Weeds is the earliest film by Ozu that I have seen, and if his other silents are like this, than I can say that he was a man ahead of his time, in that this is really a talkie without sound. I don't believe I've ever seen such a dialogue heavy silent picture before, and when judging this as a silent film I must consider that a flaw, but as I have said, I haven't seen his earlier silents, so I don't know if this is how he has always done it, or if he just has been influece by the talkies that other directors around the world had been making since 1929...yeah, Ozu really didn't like change did he?

Aside from the fact that this is a talkie without sound, this is quite a good film, and all of the traits that Ozu would exhibit in his films until his death are to be found in this picture. If it had sound it would really be hard to guess when the movie was made, given that it is so stylisticly similar to all of the other films that Ozu would ever make.

In the end this is a good film, though I am anxious to see the 1954 version that has the benifit of sound, and even color! A side note, which has nothing to do with Ozu's work, but I really disliked the piano accompaniment that criterion added for its dvd. Sure, it was optional, and preferable to no sound at all, but it just seems so typical of what you expect a silent film soundtrack to sound like, and most of the music did not fit the scenes very well. The music that Ozu uses in his sound pictures are much, much better, and should have been a model for anyone trying to compose accompaniment for a slient Ozu picture.

[–] kerpan 17 years ago

Many of Ozu's silent films are very "noisy" -- at least virtually. Some examples. Trains clatter by noisily in I Was Born But. Dragnet Girl has a hot jazz sound track (that we have to imagine).

Yes -- the piano accompaniment for this film on the Criterion DVD is totally unsuitable. The original accompaniments to Ozu's films would have been the same kind of perky. inconsequential-seeming audio wallpaper one finds so oftenm in the sound films.

MEK

Every dream is a prophecy: every jest is an earnest in the womb of Time.

[–] mac_alain 17 years ago

Well, let me start by saying that I don't believe that Ozu ever understood cinema, but he did understand emotion and how to tell a story. This is not to insult his pictures, or to say that he wasn't a good filmmaker; but that he somehow made great films that exhibit hardly any of the physical qualities that great films exhibit. You can't judge his films with the same criteria that you would judge most other films.

An interesting observation/point of view. Yes, he was a "stubborn" film maker, and all the better for it.

[–] emncaity 12 years ago

Could not agree more with your assessment. I've always thought Ozu was a great storyteller who chose good stories and knew how to aim characters and storylines in a way that made them seem almost eternal in their import, but his film techniques still drive me crazy--the primary example of which is the anticipatory camera. You probably know what this is, but for the benefit of other readers, it's when the camera's "consciousness" magically knows when the next person is going to speak and who it is, so it goes there _before_ the person has said a word, so that in a conversation the camera is constantly anticipating and switching back and forth at the exact beginning of each completely separate bit of dialogue; the total effect is to depict conversations that are nothing like real people talk (but are exactly like theater was, and at the time, of course, film was thought of mostly as filmed theater). This becomes really intrusive when set against the usual practice these days of delaying until a sound or voice is heard that would normally turn the attention of a person in the room toward that direction, and then the camera turns at that point--or, in some cases, for specific directorial purposes, the camera may even hold on one speaker during an entire exchange. Doing it in Ozu's way--as too many people still do today (watch any night on TV and you'll see it all the time)--leaves you with the impression, whether you pay attention to it or not, of a sort of "God" controlling everything about the character's speech and really harks back to a sort of anachronistic theatricalism.

Thus, for me, Ozu's anticipation of discrete units of dialogue (with the camera) in combination with his insistence on so often using the full-facing direct shot makes his stuff seem really creaky and antiquated, even corny, but somehow because of the beauty of the stories and some of the other shots in the films, it's worth it.

However, I have to wonder how much of the interest in his films is there because of the "foreign" factor. We tend to be more lenient, I think--or those of us who love foreign films do, anyway--of such technical variations. I wonder if an American director who did the same kinds of things with the camera would be remembered as one of the all-time greats, once one had removed all the interest generated by foreign or unfamiliar cultural elements and all the leeway granted because of the assumption that some of what seemed like bad technical choices must have had something to do with "cultural differences," or something.

To be fair, he did a lot less of this as time went on, of course.

[–] wearyourlove 12 years ago

I think it's entirely unfair to say Ozu wasn't "cinematic," or that his techniques are antiquated. By suggesting this you're ignoring the tremendous elegance and economy by which he was able to tell his stories, not merely through dialogue but, indeed, through visuals and a very distinct mise-en-scène. This was not a filmmaker who simply pointed the camera and shot, or someone who didn't understand visual grammar. Watch the way he sets up shots, the blocking, the lighting, the rhythmic editing that seems to flow like water between interior and exterior spaces. His pillow shots are famous for a reason. Very few directors, I believe, understood the power of simplicity as well as Ozu, of using spaces and objects and bodies and montage in such graceful ways. The only reason it may seem standard to some is because it looks so damn effortless.

[–] emncaity 12 years ago

To be clear, I don't mean that Ozu had no skills or was anything close to a subpar director; I mean "antiquated" only in the sense that this sort of thing was characteristic of films half a century or more ago and seems dated now. But as compared with what was going on at the time, there wasn't anything especially odd about it, and I'm sure it wouldn't have hit the audience that way. I'm also saying that in that specific respect, he wasn't particularly forward-looking or ahead of his time.

However, as you say, the way he sets up shots, the mise-en-scene, blocking and lighting, and (at his best) the flow and rhythm of his editing (I'm assuming here, without going back to check it out, that he did his own editing, or at least controlled the process) were done with skill, simplicity, and directness.

I think you must think I am mistaking the beauty of Ozu's simplicity for simpleton-ness. I'm not. I don't question his place amongst the greatest directors at all.