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The Record of a Tenement Gentleman

Nagaya shinshiroku

Japan

1947

72 Min
Black and White
Japanese
  • Currently 4.0/5 Stars.
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DIR Yasujirô Ozu

SCR Yasujirô Ozu, Tadao Ikeda

DP Yûharu Atsuta

CAST Chôko Iida, Hohi Aoki, Eitarô Ozawa, Mitsuko Yoshikawa, Reikichi Kawamura, Hideko Mimura, Chishû Ryû, Takeshi Sakamoto, Eiko Takamatsu, Taiji Tonoyama

ED Yoshi Sugihara

PROD DES Tatsuo Hamada

MUSIC Ichirô Saitô

SOUND Yoshisaburo Seno

New York (Special Events)

Synopsis

Tashiro the fortune-teller packs up a stray boy and foists him on his widowed neighbor Otane. She treats the sulky bed-wetter as a nuisance. She takes him back to his original place of residence, but is told his father has packer up and gone. Over a few incidents, the boy gradually cracks open her hard shell and even restores community spirit to the neighborhood. Just when Otane is ready to adopt him, his father, who has lost him in a crowd, turns up for him. Otane decides to adopt one of the many homeless boys who hang out near Saigo’s statue in Ueno park. —Ozu-san.com

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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trolley freak

15Aug11

This perfectly executed and moving Ozu film was the first he made post-Second World War, and his first since There Was A Father five years earlier. The excellent character actress Choko Iida is brilliant again as the curmudgeonly woman reluctantly looking after a lost boy. At first she tries to ged rid of him at every opportunity but over time her icy heart is slowly melted and she decides she'd like to keep him.....

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Filip Åkerman

30Jun11

Enamouring and fun! Like watching a Miyazaki-film but with live-action and with the Ozu-way of cinematic expression.

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Brandon=andon=andon=andon

18May11

A truly humanistic film, very heartwarming and moving.

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Record of a Tenement Gentleman

By columbi​atch on March 18, 2010

Ozu’s first postwar film is about the relationship between an elderly widow and a homeless boy who she begrudgingly takes care of after he is brought to her by a neighbor. It’s implied that the social…  read review

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