Ozu and Chekhov

(images from Tôkyô monogatari)

There are similarities, there are differences too, between Ozu and Chekhov. Let's talk about the similarities.

Chekhov was considering his plays as comedies, and anyway, he started with humorous short stories. Ozu started with comedies and was always loved by Japanese viewers for the funny situations in his movies. They were getting, of course, the serious issues from behind, but the point is they enjoyed his humor.

Actually, both of them, Ozu and Chekhov, had a great mastership in mixing dramatic and funny.

Both of them are great narrators. At the end of any Ozu movie, you feel sad it's over.

It's not only because of the natural mix of drama and humor. It's also something else: at Chekhov as well as at Ozu, the story is not handcuffed by the plot. It means, the story starts from the head of the author, then it goes on freely.

Let me make here a digression: in Kiarostami's Ten, a woman gets once on in the car; her story is of no interest; however Kiarostami keeps her in the movie, just to give her story a chance; and the chance comes later, when she was abandoned by her friend; she is smiling to keep his tears, and suddenly we can see she has shaved her head!

Everybody knows the example of Chekhov's gun. Well, I have the feeling that the gun came on unexpectedly and he left the gun there, just to give it a chance; and the chance came later.

Story and plot are different animals. Chekhov was saying that he wanted to capture life, as it was. Ozu was saying that plots bored him.

Ozu is painting in each movie a whole universe; because the family in any given of his movies reaches the limits of the universe. Everything that is in the universe, we find there, in his families. And Ozu, like Chekhov, regards each of his heroes with great respect, great empathy, great kindness. They give each personage, as negative as she or he could be, the chance of a possible reason.

Alan Granville once said, I found the holiness in the country of nowhere.

Another similarity between Chekhov and Ozu: the discretion of feelings, the elegance of each personage to keep into herself or himself the joys and the sorrows. In this regard, both authors are Mozartians.


(Yasujiro Ozu and Setsuko Hara)

(Chekhov)