"How American Intellectuals Learned to Love Ozu," by Mindy Aloff, April 1994, The New York Times

In this article, Mindy Aloff investigates how American audiences have responded to Ozu since the 1950s, when his works became available in the United States. Aloff asks what attracts Americans to Ozu's body of film, and discovers a number of possible reasons. While Ozu's films are not widespread in the U.S., a few New York City venues continue to present his surviving films at special screenings. These screenings draw a diverse viewership with a variety of reasons for liking Ozu's films. Some identify Ozu with the New York City art scene, especially when he became noticed alongside revolutionary directors like Godard and Antonioni. Others cite the surprisingly powerful emotional impact of his artfully understated films as the main reason for their fascination with his work. Still others are attracted to the Western aspect of his quiet, simple films, which admittedly were influenced greatly by Griffith and Harold Lloyd. The simplicity and familiarity of his films rendered them accessible and engaging to the Western audience. The moralistic themes and subtle humor of Ozu's films are also universally appealing regardless of the era in which they are viewed.

This article is significant to my study of Ozu through his film Passing Fancy primarily because it discusses the western association of his films. It reinforces the idea that Ozu was not a unitary, uninfluenced figure in filmmaking, but a simultaneously impressionable and original director who adapted what he learned from western films to direct and write his own. It also helps us better understand the source of the humor in Passing Fancy.  Comedies are said to typically not translate well across cultures--this is not the case with Ozu's comedies (Passing Fancy among them), which do not rely on the audience's prior understanding of Japanese culture of language to make their unsophisticated jokes and visual gags. It is in part the western association that so many have made with Ozu's work that renders it successful among foreign audiences.

"The Production of Modernity in Japanese Cinema: Shochiku Kamata Style in the 1920s and 1930s" by Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano, May 2000

In this chapter, Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano discusses a Japanese film style known as katamacho and its implications for the Japanese conception of modern mass culture. First she stresses the need to draw a distinction between two Japanese words for modernism (“modanisumu” and “kindaishugi”), something that previous scholars have failed to do. “Modanisumu,” she explains, entails a sort of levity, cheerfulness, and novelty, while “kindaishugi” suggests “both positive and negative connotations created by European rationalism.” Our use of the word “modernism” for characterizing Japanese film is further complicated by the fact that most discourses on Japanese/western relations are dominated by Western perspectives. Marciano then describes how the plural meanings of “modernism” are equally deployed in Japanese katamacho film. The katamacho film Our Neighbor Ms. Yae, for example, uses the progressive, light conception of modernism (“modanisumu”) to subordinate certain other aspects of modernism (“kindaishugi”) that threaten the Japanese social order. Katamacho films often appear modern in their use of subjective gazes in the style of other forms of mass modern culture. Marciano contends that this is a result of a sort of inferiority complex among Japanese filmmakers who were attempting to break away from the stereotype that Japanese cinema was a poor imitation of western films and a “low form” of modern culture. Katamachi-style film in particular seemed to align itself European culture to improve the reputation of Japanese film.

This article is helpful to my research because it helps characterize the types of films that were being released simultaneously to Ozu's Passing Fancy and other silent comedies in the 1920s and 30s. Because Japanese films tend to express different attitudes towards the various facets of modernism, we should not expect Passing Fancy to exhibit a sort of distinctly progressive/modern attitude over a distinct conservative/traditionalistic one. Rather, we may interpret Passing Fancy as perhaps having multiple, perhaps even opposing attitudes towards modern ideas and the west. The film seems adopt this more complicated attitude: in one instance, for example, the main character's son falls very ill from overindulging in western sweets; he is only cured, however, by advances in modern medicine.

"Ozu, Sound, and Style" by Matt Hauske. date unavailable.

In this article Matt Hauske examines how Ozu's editing patterns changed over his period of directing. Specifically, it discusses the remarkably consistent shot length in his films, and explains that the stylistic choices accompanying this shot consistency remained even after Ozu adopted sound film. The introduction of sound film resulted in an almost universal doubling of average shot length in films. While Ozu's films experienced the same effect, the editing patterns and style of his silent films carried over to his sound ones. Ozu himself admitted that his sound films retained the style of his silent ones. Hauske suggests that Ozu's editing style resisted the changes that new technology seemed to insist upon because Ozu continued to work primarily in family dramas and comedies. To Ozu, who valued narrative clarity and simplicity above all else, these types of films required lengthy shots and heavy use of intertitles. Ozu's characteristic use of long takes and depiction of dialogue suggests that Ozu was in many respects ahead of his time, even though he adopted sound technology much later than other directors. Hauske also notes that Ozu often makes it clear in his silent films that he's aware of the potential for sound technology: scenes where characters react to off-screen sources of sound seem to be playful reminders of this awareness. Hauske concludes by speculating about the reasons for Ozu's remarkable editing consistency in his films. Perhaps Ozu's greatest reason for very consistent shot length and editing patterns, Hauske posits, is the opportunity it affords to play with audience expectations and subvert Hollywood editing norms.

Hauske does not deal with Passing Fancy specifically, but as one of Ozu's later silent comedies this article seems applicable to it. Particularly interesting is Hauske's suggestion that Ozu's silent films were quite advanced for their heavy use of dialogue and lengthy shots. In Passing Fancy Ozu demonstrates a proficient use of both to further the narrative. By Hauske's assessment, then, Ozu proves to be a progressive director for his innovative editing work in his silent comedies. Perhaps even more important, however, is the idea that Ozu used very consisting editing simply in in order to subvert it; in doing so, he would often undermine the audience's expectations and diverge from the classical western editing that he admired so much.