On the commentary track to Criterion’s presentation of this all time great Ozu silent, film scholar Donald Richie, always excellent for Criterion, points out the ways in which this seemingly simple film posits Ozu between his early comedies and the devastating family dramas of the ’40’s and ’50’s, starting with a burlap background during the titles, and going on to explore the dissolution of the Japanese family unit through suggestions, quiet emotions, and a perfectly constructed mise-en-scene. Takeshi Sakamoto reprises his role from “Passing Fancy” as Kihachi, the wandering hero of the proletariat, who this time is coming back to his hometown as the director of a struggling Kabuki troupe, finding comfort in an old mistress and an estranged son, who calls him “uncle” and shares an achingly beautiful fishing trip with the man, before a jealous mistress ruins the party by interfering with gossip and nasty schemes. It’s a testament to the ever burgeoning brilliance of Ozu’s mastery of construction and storytelling that, even though the film is silent, the design, staging, camera-work, and effectively dramatic emotions are hardly different twenty five years later in his famed color remake, “Floating Weeds”, and as Richie points out, it’s a mature style for a filmmaker whose characters progressed through the years, from militarization, war, devastation, and economic recovery, as the director got older, wiser, and wealthier, from tenement dwelling peasants, to upper-middle class executives, but whose lives, families, and emotional difficulties seemingly stayed the same.