Films of 1947

RECORD OF A TENEMENT GENTLEMAN

 Dir.: YASUJIRO OZU

Yasujiro Ozu’s first postwar film, Nagaya shinshiroku, is as delightful as his comedy I Was Born, but . . . and twice as profound. Its makeshift family reflects Japan’s shaken institutions, and its setting—the lower-class section of downtown Tokyo—reflects Japan’s postwar economic hardship. What irony that the character who sets the plot into motion, Tashiro, is a fortune teller. Japan’s future is clouded and indeterminate.
     Kohei, the small son of an itinerant carpenter, attaches himself to Tashiro, who brings him home to his tenement to the dismay of his actor-roommate. They decide that Tané, their widowed neighbor, should take the boy in for the night. Tané wants no part of Kohei, but he is left there and, so, she complies. Attempts to find the motherless boy’s father fail, and Kohei tries Tané’s patience with his recurrent bed-wetting. But the two slowly bond, and Kohei becomes for a while a cherished part of Tané’s life.
     For a while; Ozu is cinema’s great poet of transience, impermanence. A key shot consists of discarded newspaper pages blown by wind across the ground. The image, poignant, refers to Japan’s postwar army of abandoned children. Can anything restore the nation’s fortunes? Perhaps; but Kohei’s young father shows up one day to claim his son, expressing charming gratitude.
     Kohei and Tané: each wears a pudgy, sour face. Chouko Iida beautifully plays Tané. Thus Ozu’s great pre-war tragedienne, best known for maternal roles, now plays a reluctant surrogate mother or grandmother—and she is hilarious when expressing disapproval of the boy, deeply moving once her heart opens up to him, and devastating upon her loss of him.
     The film ends by showing anonymous young boys in a park. Two share a cigarette: the obliteration of Japanese childhood.

-Dennis Grunes

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FILM STARTS AT 8.30 PM

72 mins

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