This article discusses Yasujiro Ozu’s use of narrative during his silent film period.  One characteristic is that he uses shots of objects to portray narrative.  This also includes shots of landscapes.  This functions to put together pieces of a whole, or piece together contiguous areas.  Another common technique is to show an object being manipulated by someone and then show the person manipulating it.  This inverts cause and effect, as it shows the effect first, and then the cause.  Ozu also will tend to show the after-effects of an event rather than the event itself.  For example, instead of showing a father scolding his children, he will show the children upset after being yelled at.  Ozu also frequently used empty still-life shots.  However, they are scarce in his earlier films.  Another technique he uses is suppressed transitions.  This is when there is a seemingly continuous shot that is in fact discontinuous.  For example, in “I was born but…” there is a transition between two scenes that both contain a close-up of a telephone pole, but the shots are actually discontinuous.   Also, Ozu’s camera was not always in focus on the main action, and often used confusing camera angles. 

This article is useful as an analysis of the way that Ozu presents his story to the audience, causing the audience to feel as if they are observing everyday events.  All of the techniques discussed in the article serve to slow the understanding of the events on-screen by the audience.  For example, early on in “I was born but…” there is a scene where the camera focuses on the inside of the family’s new house as we see the cart with the two boys arriving out-of-focus through a window.  The audience is interested in the actions of the two boys, the protagonists, but the camera impedes our full sight of them.  Also, suppressed transitions allows Ozu to put scenes that are not related by plot next to one another and impede the logical progression of the plot and order of scenes.  The effect of this is that the audience becomes very aware of their observer role.  The audience is not always in the middle of the action, and is thus often given limited information.  In addition, it subverts the plot by impeding the logical order of events.  The plot does not proceed in directly logical order and there are many scenes which do not seem to have particular importance.  For example, there is the scene in the classroom where one of the boys gets in trouble for eating a swallow egg, as well as the scene in which the protagonist eat their lunches in a field.  Neither of these scenes advance the plot but serve as simply events in the characters’ lives.  All of this has the effect that we not being drawn into some grand plot manipulated by the director and writers, but rather that we are viewing a series of somewhat insignificant, loosely connected events.  This is much closer to everyday life.

Geist, Kathe. Narrative Style in Ozu's Silent Films. Film Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 2 (Winter, 1986-1987), pp. 28-35