He’s not bad. :)
Not for me, but again, i haven’t seen enough of his films. just a small selection of his family dramas, and they are pretty samey. at least the 9 i’ve seen were anyway.
Late Spring is a masterpiece though. I much prefer it to Tokyo Story
are u suggesting we pretend that 100 or so other directors don’t exist?
No, we can’t.
No.
Tarentino is better.
If there’s one thing that’s been amply demonstrated here, it’s that “we” can’t agree on anything.
(Apparently not even how to spell Tarantino, Apu . . . heh heh heh :) )
I’m not sure he even cracks the top 100.
“If there’s one thing that’s been amply demonstrated here, it’s that “we” can’t agree on anything.”
Haha – seriously!
I’m not sure we could get everyone to agree that Ozu is even a filmmaker.
Followed his own path, influential and admired in Japan and internationally, master of his own unique style, wise and humane observer, chronicler of different layers of society, from a range of viewpoints, with skilful use of colour, mise-en-scene, subtle characterisations, eliciting superb and natural performances. There’s richness in the variations of his mature films, following diversity in the silent era. Personally i would prefer a bit more political bite and passion, a greater, more affecting urge for wider change- though lessons can be learned from the personal interactions and circumstances at a given time; holding a mirror to society without blunt melodramatic moralising. Great, sure. Mark Cousins in his series The Story of Film declared him the greatest. Maybe we should enlist him to say more on that here.
There’s no such thing as greatest director.
Mizoguchi is greatest director, followed by Renoir, Tarkovsky and Satyajit Ray
steven spielberg created good movies
I like Mizoguchi but I prefer Ozu.
Cousins was right to stress balance with Ozu. He sees poetry in the city, loves trains and chimneys, yet has a feel for nature. In some films, elders are privileged, in others, kids or younger adults; the whole spectrum of family life. Intimate family life, but within the wider environment and social change. An apparently politically/morally conservative film like Early Spring followed by a more challenging one like Tokyo Twilight. And gender balance. His style is innovative and bold yet also conservative. His films need to be taken as part of a whole.
No, no we can’t. Go away!
Ozu is maybe my favourite filmmaker. I think his contemporaries, Naruse, Gosho, Shimizu, Shimazu and the other Shochiku masters (as well as Nikkatsu masters like Uchida and Yamanaka) should not be as forgotten as they regularly are, though.
Gosho’s Dancing Girl of Izu is quite possibly the greatest silent film I’ve ever seen. And among these filmmakers Shimazu and Shimizu were known as the true masters of the silent film.
Got a link to that Gosho by any chance Wu? I’d love to see it.
I can agree that Ozu is a great director.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY Ozu Yasujirō, 12 December 1903 – 12 December 1963
ONE of the very very greatest, surely.
My favorites are “Record of a Tenement Gentleman” and "I Was Born But. . . "
Nice video. Kaurismäki isn’t right though that there’s no violence in Ozu’s cinema.
My fave Ozu would be Early Summer, End of Summer, Autumn Afternoon, Late Spring, I Was Born..But, Good Morning, Flavour of Green Tea over Rice and and The Only Sun
Probably
There is no better director of all time
David Bordwell Monday December 12, 2011:
No filmmaker has come closer to perfection.
Thanks to his apparently simple stories and easily grasped technique, Ozu has captivated and moved audiences for eighty years. But this humble artisan who compared himself to a tofu seller created a cinema of which no other director dreamed. Modest in effect yet extravagantly precise in execution, Ozu’s films are at once amusing, rapturous, and experimental. He tests his characters, his medium, his audience, and himself. His films show us how profound a genre- and star-driven studio picture can be. At the same time they open up a vast realm of purely cinematic possibilities. No filmmaker has come closer to perfection.
Richie and Bordwell have a tendency to focus so obstinately on the formal uniqueness of Ozu that they create blind spots for filmmakers like Naruse, who at his best was as perfect as Ozu was at his.
Sure, he isn’t saying Ozu was prefect, just that he comes closest to that Bordewell-ian order known to Bordwell as perfection.
Yeah, I’m just saying…
Arguing over the meaning of a vase in Late Spring is sort of missing the point of what Ozu was trying to do.
There are extremes in any means of critical analysis. And Bordwell and, to a somewhat lesser degree, Richie can tend to focus much too much on the purely formal aspects of what filmmakers do, instead of looking at how a filmmaker uses formal language to communicate alongside narrative.
Hazards of academic specialization, gentlemen.
Yeah, basically.
And hey… If it weren’t for Figures Traced in Light I probably would have no idea how to see a director’s specific input through acting and camerawork, so it’s not even to suggest Bordwell isn’t a superb critic…
sandwiches
There’s no room for dissent.