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Synopsis

Yasujiro Ozu’s first talkie, the uncommonly poignant The Only Son is among the Japanese director’s greatest works. In its simple story about a good-natured mother who gives up everything to ensure her son’s education and future, Ozu touches on universal themes of sacrifice, family, love, and disappointment. Spanning many years, The Only Son is a family portrait in miniature, shot and edited with its maker’s customary exquisite control. —The Criterion Collection

Director

Original

Yasujirô Ozu

Yasujiro Ozu was born in the old Fukagawa district of Tokyo, to a fertilizer merchant, in 1903. In 1923, after a couple of years as an assistant teacher in rural Japan, Ozu was hired as assistant cameraman at the Shochiku Motion Picture Company. Early in his career, Ozu began to experiment with an idiosyncratic film style that ran contrary to the conventions of Japanese or Hollywood cinema of the day. He strove to reduce and simplify his film style; he cast such mainstays as the fade, the dissolve, and the pan from his cinematic palette. He shot solely from a low camera angle, using a 50mm lens, and he subordinated spatial continuity to visual aesthetics. Ozu directed his first film in 1927,The Sword of Penitence. In 1932, he began to hit his creative stride with the touching comedy I Was Born, But…, which was his first commercial success. During World War II, he made few films such as There Was a Father.

After the war, Ozu reached his creative peak and made some of his finest… read more

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Daniela

27Jan12

Read, or should I say "watched," like 1920s Soviet agitprop. The anti-Western/anti-Capitalism force is strong in this one. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing . . . but it was just odd to have a Japanese film remind me so much of the USSR (a la Pudovkin's Mother . . . ). Besides that, it was worth a watch at least. Interesting to see how Ozu's style has changed somewhat, and in many ways stayed the same.

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Francisco R.

14Jan12

Beautifully paced, meditatingly simple and powerful, a brilliant transition to the sound era from Ozu.

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David Huxley

8Aug11

The same formula that Ozu would use for the next 25 years is present in this, his first sound film: the low-angle static camera shots, the establishing shots, and especially, his focus on contemporary Japanese family life. Few filmgoers would realize the twenty year gap between this and "Early Spring" especially if they watch the new Criterion transfer. Contrast with Mizoguchi's "Osaka Elegy" released the same year.

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trolley freak

3Aug11

Ozu's first talkie is this exceptionally moving story focusing on the self-sacrifice of a mother, prepared to sell her home to fund her son's move away to Tokyo in order to continue his education and to escape the poverty of their rural home town. Years later, she pays a visit and discovers him living in poverty and barely scraping a living for his wife and son. Choko Iida is brilliant as the disappointed mother.....

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Ozu, Warner Archive, "Alamar," Anti-Biopics

By David Hudson on July 14, 2010

"By 1936, the year of Yasujiro Ozu's first feature-length talkie, The Only Son, the mature filmmaker of late masterpieces like Tokyo

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The Only Son

By asuraf on August 1, 2010
After working and sacrificing her entire adult life to send her precious child to Tokyo for advanced schooling, a poor mother joins her now grown son for a week to see how he turned out, in a film by…

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