Ozu Yasujiro

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Ozu Yasujiro

• Views from One Foot above the Floor

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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.

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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.

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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

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Ozu as auteur

• Ozu-gumi (the Ozu crew)
• The same crew over many films with Ozu as their
  absolute head - made possible in Japans studio
  system

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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

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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 Ozus death he did not work for any other
  director.

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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 Ozus intention.

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Ozu as auteur

• Through years experience as an assistant
  Ive learned what Ozu wanted. I didnt bother to
  ask him about the camera position Occasionally
  he said, I dont like to look down on people. A
  down shot makes me feel as though Im looking
  down. So I like the camera on the horizontal.
• -- Yûharu Atsuta

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Ozu as auteur

• Kôgo Noda
• He co-wrote with Ozu 13 scripts of the latters
  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

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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!)

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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.

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Ozu as auteur

• Rigid, artificial action - lack of spontaneity
  (criticism)
• However, Ozu won complete trust from actors
• Stylized beauty - sense of order

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Ozus 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)

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Ozus 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

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Ozus Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)

• - Horizontal composition
• c.f. Mizoguchis diagonal composition

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Ozus Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)

• Composition - horizontal and (slight) low angle
  while Mizoguchis favourite composition is
  diagonal and high-angle

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Ozus Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)

• Perspectival placement of a group of people
• Careful, geometrical arrangement of screen

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Ozus Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)
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Ozus Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)

• - Frontal composition actors (almost) directly
  looking at and talking to camera
• Unconventional and against classic filmmaking
  rules

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Ozus Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)

• More frontal compositions

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Ozus Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)

• Frontal compositions
• Faces turned to the camera

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Ozus 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.

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Ozus Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)

• More examples of Ozus favourite interior
  composition
• Empty tatami in foreground, figures in the middle
  ground and small garden and wall at background

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Ozus Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)

• Japanese architecture and horizontal composition
• The cameras straight-on, horizontal angle and
  low position creates horizontal composition.
• Lack of depth - shallow composition

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Ozus Colour Films

• The same mise-en-scéne as in the black-and- white
  films
• Repeated uses of the same colour - red

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Ozus Colour Films
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Ozus Visual Style (Montage)

• Montage (Editing)
• - Rhythmic editing (nearly fixed lengths of
  shots according to sizes)
• Ozus 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)

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Fade (in)
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Wipe
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Ozus Visual Style (Montage)

• Almost perfect visual match in shot-and-reverse-sh
  ots
• 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.

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Ozus 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.

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Ozus 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

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Ozus Visual Style (Montage)

• - Pillow shots or still life shots which
  are not directly related with narratives and
  function as transitional insertions.

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Ozus 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

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Ozus Visual Style (Montage)

• Cut to a low-angle shot of a building under
  construction with riveting machine sounds and
  music

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Ozus Visual Style (Montage)

• Cut to another shot of the construction site with
  the same sounds

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Ozus Visual Style (Montage)

• Then a cut to Koichis clinic with his sister,
  Shige present. The new scene begins.

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Ozus 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.

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Ozus Film Style

• Ignoring the standard continuity editing
• - 180 degree rule
• - Omission of the establishing shot
• - using space of 360 degrees

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Ozus Montage the 180 degree rule

• Ozu comfortably ignores the 180 degree rule a
  man drinking tea facing towards the frame right

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Ozus Montage the 180 degree rule

• In the next shot, the man facing the frame left.
  A grave sin in the classical montage style

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Meanings of Ozus visual style

• Restrained and minimalist cinematic style
• Ozus film style is often compared to Zen
• - Ozus 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

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Meanings of Ozus visual style

• - Contemplative and meditative quality
• the expression of quietness, motionless,
  emptiness and nothingness

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Meanings of Ozus visual style

• - Self-abandonment
• yielding to fate and destiny without
• conscious struggle
• - The tombstone of Ozus grave - ? Nothing

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Meanings of Ozus visual style

• How much are Ozus images religious expression?
• How closely are Ozus films related with Zen
  Buddhism and its spirit?