The Ellipses of Ozu

(Setsuko Hara and Chishu Ryu in Tôkyô monogatari)

Was Ozu an artist or a craftsman? The question seems weird; it has a point. It's like with Vivaldi: did he compose 300 concerts, or one concert 300 times?

Let's take only the Noriko Trilogy. Are there three movies, or is there only one, crafted three times with slight variations? So the question is: did Ozu create 58 movies, or only one for 58 times? As his first films are now lost (no more originals, no more copies, nothing), you could find here a reason :) Just kidding.

The answer is that Ozu was interested in certain aspects of the Japanese cultural space, he was exploring ways to express these aspects in the movie art and he aimed to improve them continuously.

With each new movie the setting becomes more precise, the position of the camera becomes more precise, the faces of the actors become closer to the archetypal.

And the story becomes more and more elliptic. Any non-essential accessory disappears. With any new film, Ozu is more and more minimalistic.

Let's take Tôkyô monogatari. The old parents are getting ready for the trip to Tokyo and tell a neighbor who's passing by the window that they will meet one of their sons at Osaka.

Their stop at Osaka is not in the movie; their railroad trip neither: they are not necessary in the economy of the story, while the preparations of their son from Tokyo to bring them home and the reaction of his kids are shown: they are essential and they carry somehow the ellipses (the parallel events from Osaka and from the railroad trip).

When they come back from Tokyo, the parents have to stop at Osaka for a few days, as the mother is ill. The movie shows only their son, complaining at office of his troubles with the old guys. Again, his complain carries somehow the ellipses (mother getting ill, their unexpected stop at Osaka).

The old guys come back at home and mother collapses. The movie shows only the son from Tokyo getting the news and his discussion with the sister, her proposal to go both to their parents, and to take also with them the mourning dresses just in case.

So nothing is useless in the story; the economy is total; Ozu has ruthlessly cut anything non-essential.

(Yasujiro Ozu and Setsuko Hara)