Passing Fancy
Director: Yasujiro
Ozu
Year: 1933
Rating: 7.0
Silent Film.
The first in a series of four films from Yasujirô Ozu starring Takeshi
Sakamoto as Kihachi. At the time Ozu was going back and forth between light
comedies, social dramas and in the same year he even made the gangster film
Dragnet Girl. This film has elements of comedy mixed with social melodrama
in an effective manner. It leads off with comedy for much of the film but
then quickly swerves to melodrama and punctuates it at the end with a piece
of lovely sentiment. Kihachi is basically a comic figure - not educated,
a skirt chaser, spends every yen he gets on drinking with his friend Jiro
(Den Ohinata) and barely tries on occasion to be a father to his son. The
absence of the mother is never really explained but one guesses that she
ran off leaving father and son behind. But he is well-liked by his small
poor community around his shanty one room home in Tokyo for his good nature
and ability to make people laugh. He just never really grew up. This small
community is in a sense his family.
His relationship with his 10-year son is a bit backwards with the son often
looking after him and through their often sullen stand-offs there is a pool
of hidden love sitting there. In one scene the son Tomio has been badly teased
by classmates (the older son in I Was Born, But) about his father being a
loser and he comes home and tears the leaves off a plant in the home. Kihachi
smacks him a few times and sits down whereupon the son comes over and smacks
his father many times and Kihachi just takes it without a murmur of protest.
Hard to know exactly what to make of the scene. Has it happened before one
wonders. Early in the film Tomio has a patch over an eye and you might speculate
from a whack from his father but again but we don't know.
Tomio is played by Tomio Aoki aka Tokkan Kozo who was the younger brother
in the wonderful I Was Born, But in the previous year. It is a face you can't
forget. Ozo must have been fascinated by it. It is sullenly mischievous but
it is completely straight-faced and rarely shows emotion till he breaks out
bawling. He had become a child star in Ozu's A Straightforward Boy in 1929.
He has future Yakuza strong-armed man all over him but in fact he went on
to a long career in films - even up to 2004 when he died - with Pistol Opera
on his resume as well as three Stray Cat Rock films in the 70's. I bet I
could pick him out in a second.
A young homeless waif of a woman (Nobuko Fushimi) comes to Kihachi's attention
and he finds her a place to stay and work with the female café owner
Otmoe (Chôko Iida - 277 credits on IMDB and in many Ozu films) and
begins to immediately fall for her. Not difficult to do as she falls into
Ozu's type at the time - shy, pretty, modest, traditional and a wonderful
smile that slips out from time to time. But Kihachi is twice her age and
she is attracted to his younger friend Jiro who wants nothing to do with
her. This all plays out very gently against expectations. In one of his few
kind acts towards his son Kihachi gives him a bit of money which the boy
spends on sweets and gets very sick - near death sick - and this brings everyone
together. This father-son antagonism plays out in a few Ozu films - perhaps
reflecting his own relationship with his father. Here it is rather simplistic
with little nuance or subtlety but it is still makes its mark on you. Not
topnotch Ozu but it already has some of his touches on hand. After seeing
the documentaries about his preference for low camera placement it is impossible
not to notice how often the camera is looking up at standing people and parallel
with sitting or lying down people.
