Aspect Ratio?

The same can be said about John Ford: "cinemascope is good only for shooting snakes and funerals".

Keep in mind that Ozu was a rigid traditionalist. He resisted sound cinema as long as he could, then resisted color for awhile as well. Aspect ratio was simply the next step in the "evolution" of cinema, a step which, like the others, Ozu would have resisted and, eventually, had he have lived longer, capitulated to. I'm not a huge fan of the widescreen format, particularly 2.35:1. I think the 1.85:1 aspect ratio is a great compromise, and perfect for many films, especially films from 1980 and after, as a rule of thumb. But 2.35:1 rarely does the trick for me. It takes someone like Suzuki who is so wild and unpredictable in his vision that he can fill up that rectangle with enough craziness to keep your eye busy, and make the whole thing worthwhile. For most films, I think 2.35:1 is a big mistake. In any case, it's only natural that classicists like Ozu, Ford, and Naruse are going to loathe that kind of screen format with a passion. It goes against everything they know about cinema: restraint, simplicity, and a natural understanding of the concept that more is not necessarily better. Only when the young guns started reshaping the cinematic landscape in their own image did the widescreen format become so popular. The combination of youth and the culture of the '60s generation, which liberated itself from any restraints it could set its eyes on, resulted in this "more is better" attitude, which here manifests itself as a "wider is better" attitude. A wider screen means more visuals, more eye candy, more stimulation for the senses -- all things that filmmakers from just a generation earlier would not necessarily have considered to be good. But for the youth culture rising in cinema, there was a growing urge in the '60s to blow the roof off of everything traditional and sacred. And so the '60s liberated us from the constraints of the 1.33/1.37:1 aspect ratio. I'm personally not sure they did us any favors, but we'll all have our own opinions on that. I, for one, feel the same exact way about the aspect ratio issue that I feel about the color versus black-and-white issue and about the sound cinema versus silent cinema issue, which is to say that I don't see the need to blindly favor one over the other. Different films will demand different techniques. We can all find silent films that would be absolutely destroyed by the use of sound, just as we can all find examples of talkies that would be all but worthless if they were deprived of their use of sound. We can all find color films that couldn't possibly achieve their greatness in black-and-white, and we can all find examples of black-and-white films that would be a disaster in color. Screen format is no different. There are films, few as they may be, that demand the wider format. Suzuki, again, is the best example I have. Imamura made good use of the format, although I don't think his films demanded it the way Suzuki's did. Kurahara would probably be another good example. I don't say that 2.35:1 is invariably counterproductive to quality cinema. But I do think it's something that should be reserved for a certain type of cinema, and Ozu is certainly not that type.