Ozu Yasujiro
‘Views from One Foot above the Floor’
Ozu as auteur
• Complete control of filmmaking in every stage
• The condition for being
an auteur
• Ozu wrote all his late
scripts with Noda Kogo
and gave meticulous and
final instructions on the
production design and
photography to his crew
(Ozu Gumi) members.
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 had most of things in his head: set
designs, locations, compositions, lighting,
camera positions, camera movements,
acting, length of shots, the ways in which
film is cut
• Once his style was established, he never
changed it.
• Distinctive stylization
Ozu as auteur
• Ozu-gumi (the Ozu crew)
• His crew members hardly changed. Only
possible in Japan’s studio system
Ozu as auteur
• Late Spring (1949)
Producer: Yamamoto
Takeshi
Script: Ozu Yasujiro
and Noda Kogo
Camera: Atsuta Yuharu
Editor: Hamamura
Yoshiyasu
Music: Ito Senji
Art: Hamada Tatsuo
• Tokyo Monogatari
(1953)
Producer: Yamamoto
Takeshi
Script: Ozu Yasujiro and
Noda Kogo
Camera: Atsuta Yuharu
Editor: Hamamura
Yoshiyasu
Music: Saito Kojun
Art : Hamada Tatsuo
Ozu as auteur
• Equinox Flower(1958)
Producer: Yamamoto
Takeshi
Script: Ozu Yasujiro and
Noda Kogo
Camera: Atsuta Yuharu
Editor: Hamamura
Yoshiyasu
Music: Saito Kojun
Art: Hamada Tatsuo
• Autumn
Afternoon(1962)
Producer: Yamanouchi
Shizuo
Script: Ozu Yasujiro and
Noda Kogo
Camera: Atsuta Yuharu
Editor: Hamamura
Yoshiyasu
Music: Saito Kojun
Art: Hamada Tatsuo
Ozu as auteur
• Photographer: Atsuta
Yuharu
• 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 intentions.
• Tokyo-ga
Ozu as auteur
Though 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.”
-- Atsuta Yuharu
Ozu as auteur
Noda Kogo
• He co-wrote with Ozu the 13
scripts of the 15 post-war
films.
• For Ozu the script is to a film
director as the blueprint is to
an architect.
- Avoid ‘dramatic’ plots
- Ordinary stories of ordinary
people
- 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. Everything was already in Ozu’s
head. Once a scenario is completed, not a single
word is added or taken away (almost!)
Ozu as auteur
• Saito Kojun provided music for Ozu’s major postwar films. Tokyo Story, Early Spring, Tokyo
Twilight, Equinox Flower, Floating Weed, Late
Autumn, Autumn Afternoon
• Light music style with restrained emotional appeal
• Give the film distinctive mood and atmosphere
Ozu as auteur
Music from
Tokyo Story
Opening music of Late
Autumn
Ozu as auteur
Title and credit scene
Letters written in a writing brush against hemp
cloth
Ozu as auteur
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Hamamura Yoshiyasu
Ozu’s editor for his major films
Quiet editing
One shot lasts from 2 seconds
to 10 seconds: no extremely
short or long
• In the shot-reverse-shot, a shot
is timed according to the length
of dialogue
• Tokyo Story, Autumn Afternoon 1, Autumn
Afternoon 2
• Still-life shots in uniform
length
Ozu as auteur
• Ozu kept using the same actors: Ryu Chishu,
Hara Setsuko, Sugimura Haruko, Tanaka Kinuyo,
Yamamura So, Nakamura Nobuo, Tono Eijiro
• Ozu completely dictates the ways in which actors
deliver dialogues and act, allowing them no
freedom and improvisation.
Ozu as auteur
• Performers who appeared regularly in Ozu’s films
understood his intentions and filming methods
completely.
Ozu as auteur
• More regular faces in Ozu’s films.
• Tanaka Kinuyo and Sugimura Haruko
Ozu as auteur
• Rigid, artificial action - lack of spontaneity
(both strength and weakness)
• Ozu won complete trust from actors
• Stylized ‘beauty’ - sense of order
Ozu operating
the camera by
himself
Tokyo-ga
interview of
Atsuta Yuharu
Ozu editing the
film himself.
Ozu directing performance
Tokyo-ga interview of Ryu Chishu
Ozu directing performance
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, a slight telephoto, the focal
length of the normal lens 35mm)
Ozu’s Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)
• The camera placed about one foot from the floor low level shots without moving the camera (no
pans or travelling)
• Only slight low-angle
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 the camera
• Unconventional and against classic film making
rules
Ozu’s Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)
• More frontal compositions
Ozu’s Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)
• More frontal composition
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
• Shoji (sliding paper door) wide open and shallow
perspective with background view is partly
blocked by a wall.
Ozu’s Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)
• More examples of Ozu’s favourite interior design
• Empty tatami in foreground, figures in the
middle ground and a small garden and wall at the
background
Ozu’s Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)
• The same interior design consistently used
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 is employed in colour
films
• Repeated uses of the same colour - red
Ozu’s Colour Films
Ozu’s Colour Films
• Red is used in ‘pillow’ shots
Ozu’s Visual Style (Montage)
Montage (Editing)
- Rhythmic editing (nearly fixed lengths of
shots according to shot sizes and lengths of
diaologues)
‘Ozu’s low camera position is not for long
takes. It makes a rhythm from a combination
of medium long shot, and reverse mediumlong shot. Consequently, how long one shot
lasts becomes very important.
- 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 (large) portion of an action, an event or
situation.
• Ozu frequently uses this device.
• The viewer learns of important narrative events
only after they have occurred.
• Tokyo Story: 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)
• Pillow shot – an nondiegetic punctuation
shot inserted between
two sequences in
Ozu’s films.
• Inviting
(philosophical)
interpretations of their
purpose and function.
• Late Spring
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 to 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 mistake 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
• Empty frame – an action ends and an empty
frame is left – great emotional resonance
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?