Ozu Yasujiro
‘Views from One Foot above the Floor’
Ozu as auteur
• Complete grip on
film-making in every
stage
• Ozu wrote all his late
scripts with Noda
Kôgo and gave
meticulous and final
instructions on
production design and
photography.
Ozu as auteur
Mr. Ozu looked happiest when he was
engaged in writing a scenario with Mr.
Kogo Noda, at the latter's cottage on the
tableland of Nagano Prefecture. By the time
he finished writing a script, after about four
months' effort, he had already made up
every image in every shot, so that he never
changed the scenario after we went on the
set. The words were so polished up that he
would not allow us even a single mistake.
Ozu as auteur
• Ozu has most of things in his head: set
design, location, composition, lighting,
camera position, camera movement, acting,
length of shots, the ways in which film is
cut
• Once his style is established, he never
changed it.
• Stylization
Ozu as auteur
• Ozu-gumi (the Ozu crew)
• The same crew over many films with Ozu as their
absolute head - made possible in Japan’s studio
system
Ozu as auteur
• Banshun (1949)
Producer: Yamamoto
Takeshi
Script: Ozu Yasujirô and
Noda Kôgo
Camera: Atsuta Yûharu
Editor: Hamamura
Yoshiyasu
Music: Itô Senji
Art: Hamada Tatsuo
• Tokyo Monogatari (1953)
Producer: Yamamoto
Takeshi
Script: Ozu Yasujirô and
Noda Kôgo
Camera: Atsuta Yûharu
Editor: Hamamura
Yoshiyasu
Music: Saitô Kôjun
Art : Hamada Tatsuo
Ozu as auteur
• Photographer: Atsuta
Yûharu (or Yûshun)
• Atsuta was an
assistant cameraman
for Ozu for 6 years
and his first
photographer for 25
years from 1937
(What did the Lady
Forget?) to 1962.
After Ozu’s death he
did not work for any
other director.
Ozu as auteur
• Ozu was the only
director for whom
Atsuta operated his
camera. Atsuta had
learned what Ozu
wanted before he
became the first
cameraman and he did
not need any
instruction.
• Complete grasp of
Ozu’s intention.
Ozu as auteur
Through years‘ experience as an assistant …
I’ve learned what Ozu wanted. I didn‘t
bother to ask him about the camera position;
Occasionally he said, “I don’t like to look
down on people. A down shot makes me
feel as though I‘m looking down. So I like
the camera on the horizontal.”
-- Yûharu Atsuta
Ozu as auteur
Kôgo Noda
• He co-wrote with Ozu 13
scripts of the latter’s 15
post-war films.
• For Ozu the script is to a
film director as the
blueprint is to an architect.
• Avoidance of ‘dramatic’
plot
• Stories of the ordinary
• Birth, growth, marriage,
aging and death - ‘the
wheel of life’
Ozu as auteur
• Scripts written jointly
by Ozu and Noda
• Few instructions of action
appeared on the scripts
and no indications of shot
sizes, angles, points of view, camera movements,
lightings etc. Once a scenario is completed, not a
single word is added or taken away (almost!)
Ozu as auteur
• Ozu kept using the same actors: Ryû Chishû,
Hara Setsuko, Sugimura Haruko, Tanaka Kinuyo,
Yamamura Sô, Nakamura Nobuo, Tôno Eijirô
• Ozu completely dictates the ways in which actors
deliver dialogues and act, allowing them no
freedom and improvisation.
Ozu as auteur
• Rigid, artificial action - lack of spontaneity
(criticism)
• However, Ozu won complete trust from
actors
• Stylized ‘beauty’ - sense of order
Ozu’s Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)
Style derives from the consistent use of
certain techniques.
Mise-en-scène
- Motionless camera
- Low-level camera placement (one foot
above the floor) - One lens (with focal
length of 50mm)
Ozu’s Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)
• The camera placed about one foot from the floor low level shot without moving camera (no pans or
travelling)
• Slight low-angle shots
Ozu’s Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)
- Horizontal composition
c.f. Mizoguchi’s diagonal composition
Ozu’s Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)
• Composition - horizontal and (slight) low angle
while Mizoguchi’s favourite composition is
diagonal and high-angle
Ozu’s Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)
• Perspectival placement of a group of people
• Careful, geometrical arrangement of screen
Ozu’s Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)
Ozu’s Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)
• - Frontal composition: actors (almost) directly
looking at and talking to camera
• Unconventional and against classic filmmaking
rules
Ozu’s Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)
• More frontal compositions
Ozu’s Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)
• Frontal compositions
• Faces turned to the camera
Ozu’s Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)
Uniform set design
• Middle-class Japanese household
• Shôji (sliding paper door) wide open and shallow
perspective with background view is partly
interrupted by a wall.
Ozu’s Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)
• More examples of Ozu’s favourite interior
composition
• Empty tatami in foreground, figures in the
middle ground and small garden and wall at
background
Ozu’s Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)
• Japanese architecture and horizontal composition
• The camera’s straight-on, horizontal angle and
low position creates horizontal composition.
• Lack of depth - shallow composition
Ozu’s Colour Films
• The same mise-en-scéne as in the black-andwhite films
• Repeated uses of the same colour - red
Ozu’s Colour Films
Ozu’s Visual Style (Montage)
Montage (Editing)
- Rhythmic editing (nearly fixed lengths of
shots according to sizes)
‘Ozu’s low camera position is not for long
takes. It makes a rhythm from a
combination of medium close-up, medium
long shot and reverse shot. Consequently,
how long one shot lasts becomes very
important.‘ Yûharu Atsuta
- Cuts - no dissolve, fade or wipe)
Fade (in)
Wipe
Ozu’s Visual Style (Montage)
• Almost perfect visual match in shot-and-reverseshots
• Drinking sake from the cup held in the right
hand; matching waistcoats and ties; the same
hair-style; the pillar at their back on the screen
right.
Ozu’s Visual Style (Montage)
• Even the position of the beer bottle is the same,
on the right of each character and the label of the
beer is facing to the camera in either shot.
Ozu’s Visual Style (Montage)
• ELLIPSIS - narrative device used in literature to
leave out a portion of the story
• Ozu frequently uses this device.
• The viewer learns of important narrative events
only after they have occurred.
• Tokyo Monogatari: The viewer does not see the
grandmother falls ill - the viewer knows it only
when her son and daughter receive a telegram; her
death taking place between scenes: in one scene,
they are at her bedside and in the next they are
mourning her death
Ozu’s Visual Style (Montage)
- ‘Pillow shots’ or ‘still life shots’ which are
not directly related with narratives and
function as transitional insertions.
Ozu’s Visual Style (Montage)
• Noriko gets a phone call at work telling that her
mother-in-law is ill; medium shot of her at desk
with sound of typewriters
Ozu’s Visual Style (Montage)
• Cut to a low-angle shot of a building under
construction with riveting machine sounds
and music
Ozu’s Visual Style (Montage)
• Cut to another shot of the construction site
with the same sounds
Ozu’s Visual Style (Montage)
• Then a cut to Koichi’s clinic with his sister,
Shige present. The new scene begins.
Ozu’s Visual Style (Montage)
• Meanings of pillow shot
• contemplative and aesthetic
• Related with story-telling mechanism: frequent uses
of ellipsis (a segment of a narrative is deliberately
omitted)
• Pillow shot indicates that an ellipsis occurs.
Ozu’s Film Style
Ignoring the standard continuity editing
- 180 degree rule
- Omission of the establishing shot
- using space of 360 degrees
Ozu’s Montage: the 180 degree rule
Ozu comfortably ignores the 180 degree rule: a
man drinking tea facing towards the frame right
Ozu’s Montage: the 180 degree rule
In the next shot, the man facing the frame left.
A grave sin in the classical montage style
Meanings of Ozu’s visual style
Restrained and minimalist cinematic style
• Ozu’s film style is often compared to Zen
- ‘Ozu’s simplicity of style derives from the
fact that his art is essentially religious in
nature. It is an art predicated on the Zen
Buddhism…’ David A. Cook
- Mystery of the everyday
‘… it is only through the mundane and the
common that the transcendent can be
expressed.’ Donald Ritchie
Meanings of Ozu’s visual style
- Contemplative and meditative quality;
the expression of quietness, motionless,
emptiness and nothingness
Meanings of Ozu’s visual style
- Self-abandonment
yielding to fate and destiny without
conscious struggle
- The tombstone of Ozu’s grave - ‘無’ Nothing
Meanings of Ozu’s visual style
• How much are Ozu’s images religious
expression?
• How closely are Ozu’s films related with
Zen Buddhism and its spirit?