This article discusses Ozu’s use of traditional Japanese concepts aesthetically and thematically in his films.  Some of these include sabi, hashi, and susabi.  Sabi is particularly obvious in Ozu films.  Sabi is an awareness of the ephemeral.  Sabi can seen in the many scenes in his films that include various actions in his characters’ lives that may or may not serve to progress the plot.  Because much of what is ephemeral is also cyclical, Ozu’s tendency to use repetition and cyclical storytelling can also be interpreted as sabi.

“I was born but…” include many sabi moments.  During much of the on-screen time, the characters are engaging in seemingly menial behaviors unimportant to a grander plot.  Much time is spent watching the boys eat or play.  There are also many repetitions of scenes.  This is particularly remarkable during the scenes where they cross the railroad tracks or when the neighborhood boys come to yell at the protagonists’ house.  The repeated scenes are so similar it gives an odd sense of déjà-vu.

Geist, Kathe. West Looks East: The Influence of Yasujiro Ozu on Wim Wenders and Peter Handke.Art Journal; Sep83, Vol. 43 Issue 3, p234, 6p.

This article gives a good summary and overview of Yasujiro Ozu’s life and Shochiku studios, to which he belonged.  After the 1923 earthquake, Tokyo studios had to recreated and westernize themselves.  Shochiku in particular actively adopted American techniques and sought modernism.  Shiro Kido led Shochiku in becoming a large producer of middle-class drama (shomin-geki).  Shomin-geki soon became characterized by “bleak comedies” and “bitter melodramas”.  Many of these films in the 1930s challenged traditional Japanese values. Ozu was one of Shochiku’s most prominent directors and made many shomin-geki.

Yasujiro Ozu made most of his films with Shochiku studios and so it comes as no surprise that many of his films fall into the shomin-geki genre.  “I was born but..”  is an excellent example of one of these films.  The film combines comedy with social commentary.  There are many funny scenes, especially in watching much of he two boys’ hijinks as well as the many sight gags used by the father in the home movie.  However, the social criticism is also poignant.  In fact, the comedy done by the father in the home movie ends up serving a greater significance, as it shames his sons.

"The films of Yasujiro Ozu: true to form". ArtForum. . FindArticles.com. 30 Nov. 2008. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_2_42/ai_109023345

"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.

This chapter calls Ozu the most Japanese of the directors of his time.  While Kurosawa was modern, Ozu was traditional.  Cinema itself is a western art, so by trying to preserve traditional Japanese values, Ozu often went against the mainstream of film.  While he certainly expresses the strain of relations and interactions between people, he also tackles the strain between westernized Japan and traditional Japan.  “I was born but…” is firmly within the shomin-geki genre, which is characterized as “light understated comedies with a tinge of social consciousness”.

The strain between traditional and western Japan is evident in the “I was born but…”.  The father in particular is fully a citizen of westernized Japan.  He wears a suit everyday as he goes to work at a western-style company. There is a scene in the middle of the film at the father’s office where we see all of the workers in a line, working like drones and visibly bored with their work as they yawn.  In addition, the father is forced to humiliate himself to please his boss.  This is an evident criticism of the de-humanizing effects of westernization.  There scene at the office transitions to a scene at school in which all of the kids sit in order at their desks, drawing an obvious comparison.  We also see the children marching in unison at the order of a teacher in the schoolyard.  The children in school are simply being prepared to become drones like their fathers.  The shame that the two boys see in their father is also Ozu’s shame that men must submit themselves in that way in modern Japan. However, the boys (and Ozu) finally admit that it has become a necessity.

Schrader, Paul. Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. Da Capo Press, 1988.

While this article refers to a movement that began shortly after Ozu released Passing Fancy (1934), it may be useful for understanding the “Japanese” quality that many attribute to Ozu's films. Passing Fancy might be considered a precursor to the “monumental film” movement that Davis describes. It practices a number of the stylistic innovations that the “monumental” films later employed, among them long takes and slow camera movements. More importantly, it contains a mostly premodern narrative focused on traditional Japanese living. In this sense, we might understand Ozu's sensibilities expressed in Passing Fancy as setting or helping to establish a trend in which Japanese filmmakers made special effort to embody a “Japanese” aura.

Transcendental Style in Film, Chapter 2, by Paul Schrader, 1988

In this chapter, Paul Schrader characterizes the films of Yasujiro Ozu as fundamentally transcendental works and attempts to map Zen principles onto Ozu's filmmaking techniques. Schrader begins by qualifying Zen art as a form of transcendentalism for its spiritual focus and merging of sacred and secular spheres. Ozu, whose traditionalistic themes and style have led many regard him as Japan's “most Japanese” director, had an easier time adapting transcendentalist principles to film than many western filmmakers because its ideas were already fixed in oriental culture. To properly convey his themes in film, however, Ozu had to overcome opposing Western cinematic trends. Despite this reactionary aspect of Ozu's work, Schrader describes him as “cinema's consummate formalist,” more of a craftsman than an expressive artist: he consistently focused on the same themes, relied on the same actors and crew, and used the same types of shots and editing patterns throughout his films. Schrader draws parallels between this repetitive approach to filmmaking and the repetitive, ritualistic aspect of Zen art. Similarly, Ozu aims to capture the concept of “emptiness” or “the void” in the many silences, pauses, and slow contemplative scenes of his films, a preoccupation that has long informed Zen artwork. Finally, Ozu's family comedies and melodramas often deal with communication failure between man and his environment. These films consistently advocate oneness and unity in the face of our changing and unbalanced environment. Both of these ideas are central to Zen philosophy.

This article is useful because it highlights the paradoxical nature of Ozu's work: Ozu was reactionary in his techniques, rejecting many western film conventions, but only so that he could express Japanese fundamentalist ideas. Schrader holds that many of these reactionary techniques were in fact based on traditionalist techniques that guided Zen art. This no doubt helped Ozu earn his reputation as Japan's “most Japanese” director, but it also complicates any notion that classifies his work as distinctly conservative or traditionalist. Passing Fancy exhibits this contradiction nicely. Artistically it is very unlike western films, focusing on pauses, repetition of the same motifs and shots, and inviting the audience’s detached contemplation (much like the Zen art that Schrader claims informs it). It uses these new techniques in order to focus on the traditional Japanese home and quietly lament the encroaching modern world.

The Problem of Japaneseness in Ozu, by Daniel Hui, April 22, 2000

In this blog Daniel Hui challenges film critics who have called Ozu Japan's “most Japanese” director. This designation is problematic because it is based on a number of flawed presuppositions that are required to characterize Ozu's work as especially “Japanese.” First, it ascribes a distinct Japanese national identity to film, an originally western phenomenon. Because film form was developed in the west, Hui argues, it cannot be well defined in Japanese terms. Secondly, the classification of Ozu's work as particularly “Japanese” requires that this Japanese cinema be defined by older Japanese artistic forms (kabuki theater, Zen painting, etc.) that are only marginally applicable to film. Here we find another limitation: the “Japanese” qualities of these older arts could only be analyzed and defined in western terms, since it was exposure to the west that forced Japan to define its own culture. Finally, the “Japanese” designation mistakenly assumes that as an auteur, Ozu exercised unchanging control over the artistic expression of each of his films. Hui argues that Ozu was not so unimpressionable—his early films, for example, were strongly influenced by the sweeping changes to reflect Hollywood production that were occurring in Japanese film studios after the Kanto earthquake of 1923. Attempts to unify Ozu's body of films often oversimplify the director's range of work, ignoring the films that are clearly influenced by Hollywood films or inconveniently diverge from his typical style. Moreover, Ozu's tendency to establish norms within his films and then purposely undermine them renders such a “typical style” even harder to define. Ozu may have tried to construct a unified body of work, Hui states, “but this body is fractured, irregular, and impossible to read.” All critics seem to agree, however (Hui included), that Ozu's films attempt to represent “everyday life.” Hui contends that this focus on the everyday, not some abstract artistic construction, is ultimately what accounts for the “Japanese-ness” that so many claim to detect in his films. Because Japanese life changed over the course of Ozu's career, Hui concludes, so then did Ozu's films.

This article not only contradicts notions that Ozu was a fundamentalist/traditionalist director, but undermines my attempts to classify him at all. In suggesting that Ozu created a dynamic body of film with many influences rather than a repetitive, thematically and stylistically static one, Hui rejects the “consummate fundamentalist” description posited by other Ozu scholars. Hui goes to claim that a unifying theme characterizing all of Ozu's work is impossible to locate given Ozu's unclear assessment of his own films and his tendency to break from his own established patterns. Unfortunately, this approach was the aim of my research—I had hoped to use Passing Fancy as an indicator of Ozu's traditionalism or progressivism as a director. There may be hope for my project, however, in the one area that this article is consistent with others: its acknowledgment that all of Ozu's films represent everyday life. Hui notes that Ozu's films change to reflect the changing of everyday Japanese life. This is certainly a key idea in Passing Fancy, where a stubborn, uneducated father struggles to keep up with the changing world. In this sense, Ozu might be best described not simply as focusing on traditional aspects of Japanese life; rather, he focuses on contemporary life, and adapts his style to reflect its changes.

Ozu's Anti-Cinema, Chapter 3, by Yoshida Kiju, 1998

This chapter of Yoshida Kiju's book Ozu's Anti-Cinema deals with the amazing thematic consistency demonstrated throughout Ozu's expansive body of film. Yoshida remarks that this consistency is particularly surprising given the tumultuous era in which they were directed. Ozu was not isolated from the events and circumstances of the day either: he served in the military twice, once as a soldier at the beginning of Japan's invasion of China in 1937 and again as a director for the Information Department of the Japanese military in 1943. Somehow, however, he kept his wartime and postwar films strikingly unrelated to the social and political context of war and postwar Japan. For instance, in 1939 and 1942, times of intense war fever and militarism in Japan, Ozu directed quiet family dramas (There Was a Father) and urban comedies (The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice). Indeed, The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice was deemed so inappropriate to the national wartime milieu and unconducive to the war effort that it was forced to stop production and was not released until 1952. In these sorts of family dramas and comedies, Ozu repeatedly made the same social observations, often about the unconscious acceptance of family roles, the meanings of family ritual, and the inherent disorder of the world. Yoshida maintains that Ozu's simple, consistent presentation of these themes was an attempt to make honest order of the chaotic world as he perceived it. He rejected hidden meanings and considered symbolic likening of images and ideas to be horribly banal and disingenuous.

This article is a significant study of Ozu's auteurism because it demonstrates how he was a simultaneously progressive and conservative director. Ozu was thematically quite conservative, choosing to deal with traditional ideas like social structure and family relationships rather than the more contemporary ones posed by Japan's expansionism and militarization. However, Yoshida suggests that Ozu could be considered a progressive because his films so blatantly ignore their socio-political context and focus so heavily on domestic relationships that they seem to be peaceful antiwar statements. This could explain why Passing Fancy, a film released in 1933 and coinciding with growing Japanese militarization and expansion, makes literally no reference to the events of the “outside world” and remains so squarely focused on the quiet domestic relationship of a father and son in an unnamed Japanese town.

"Against Modernism, in Favor of Tofu: Three Silent Comedies by Ozu" by Clifford Hilo, May 2008

In this essay, occasioned by the re-release of three Ozu silent comedies (Passing Fancy, Tokyo Chorus, I Was Born, But..) on DVD, Clifford Hilo reflects on what made Ozu such a unique director. He attempts to reconcile two contradictory perspectives on the director: the western notion that Ozu was the definitive Japanese modernist, versus the Japanese perspective that he was Japan's most traditional director. Hilo contends that Ozu was neither modernist nor strict traditionalist. Rather, his stylistic idiosyncrasies that many took for “modernism” were simply intended to preserve a fluidity throughout his simple, lighthearted films. The free-flowing, loose form of Ozu's films, he offers, is “more about film pleasure than the hard disruption of forms devouring themselves.” The beauty of Ozu's work is in the details. In this sense, Hilo considers Ozu akin to a comic strip writer such as Charles Schultz for his ability to capture the essence of an image in its minute details. He also notes the western influences that have found their way into Ozu's films, among them the skillfully-conveyed social humor of Ernst Lubitsch, the sight gags of Chaplin, and the charming child-based humor of Hal Roach's Little Rascals. Hilo concludes by remarking that although the drama of Ozu's films was always uncomplicated and close to home, Ozu drew deeply from his repertory of detailed images and simple jokes to drive “the larger gears of melodrama.”

This commentary helps us understand Passing Fancy, one of Ozu's later silent comedies, by noting the trends that run throughout his other dramatic family comedies. In particular, it refutes the notion that Ozu was Japan's consummate modernist filmmaker by explaining how his idiosyncrasies served the intended continuity and playful simplicity of his films, not a progressive artistic sensibility. Many of these are evident in Passing Fancy, among them the use of low-level, direct shots interspersed with quick inserts to draw attention to comedic details. As Hilo argues, each one of these techniques ultimately maintains a sense of uncomplicated narrative continuity.

"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.

"Silent Ozu" by Catharine Russel, Cineaste Vol. 33 No. 4 (Fall 2008)

In this essay Catherine Russel focuses on Ozu's silent comedies and identifies a number of thematic trends that run throughout them. Ozu continued to work in silent film well after sound film had become prominent in Japan in 1931, so that by the time he adopted sound he had developed many of his own visual conventions, particularly the frequent use of use of low camera angles and detailed inserts. With these uniquely styled early silent films, Ozu helped to establish the Japanese shomin-geki genre, which dealt with ordinary middle class people. Many of these films offer various representations of fatherhood, using the economic background of the Great Depression, the tumultuous political situation of the time, and the encroaching modern world as context for challenging the lost, working class protagonist fathers trying to support their families. Each father must do so while caught up in the various hierarchies and obligations of Japanese society. In I Was Born, But..., for example, a father tries desperately to please his boss but loses the respect of his young sons in doing so. While Ozu's films typically contain well developed male characters (mostly fathers and sons), Russel criticizes the early films for a simultaneous trend of inexpressive female roles. Finally, she notes the repetition of suburban locales in Ozu's silent comedies, largely composed of cramped alleyways and undeveloped, telephone-pole-lined lots. She views these semi-developed areas as a sign of the steadily-approaching modern world about to collide with traditional Japanese sensibilities. Ozu's repeated focus on the everyday aspects of these suburban locations allow his films to affect the feel of familiarity that they are so well known for.

A number of Russel's points distinguish her essay from other commentaries and prove relevant to Ozu's Passing Fancy and through this, assist our understanding of Ozu himself. First, that Ozu was late in adopting sound film—he still used intertitles in Passing Fancy in 1933--certainly suggests his comfortability with the older form of filmmaking, if not his artistic conservatism. Second, Russel situates Passing Fancy in context of Ozu's other silent comedies, and then describes how the narratives and themes of these comedies reflect Japan's historical circumstances. Russel's focus on the various fatherhood-related themes that carry through Ozu's comedies is particularly useful in understanding the tenuous relationship between the main characters of Passing Fancy, a poor laborer and his son. Understanding the film's background in the Great Depression and Japan's modernization, we better recognize that Passing Fancy's sympathetically-portrayed father, who is so ill-equipped to confront the changing times, is intended provoke the audience to lament modernization and with it the end of Japanese simplicity that Ozu embraced in his films. This also suggests an old fashioned sensibility on Ozu's part.

"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.

VCAT Record

This article asserts that Buddhist aesthetics can be seen in Ozu films and then proceeds to compare those films to Kore’eda’s film Maborosi.  The two Buddhist ideas that the author sees expressed in Ozu films are mu (nothingness) and mono no aware (the mysteriousness of things).  Though Ozu was likely not trying to instill Buddhist meaning into his films, he was certainly aware of these concepts.  Ozu even had mu written on his tombstone, implying that he was particularly aligned with this concept.

This article places Ozu’s films in the cultural context of Japanese Zen Buddhism.  The concept of mu is that saying less is saying more.  Ozu’s minimalist plots and still-life shots certainly embody this, as does his tendency to de-emphasize the major events of the story and rather focus on the time and space surrounding them.  Mono no aware is also observable in Ozu’s films.  The way that Ozu’s editing and camera angles often stray from the action and do not always focus on what is most interesting makes the audience slightly perplexed and wondering about the meaning of different events or objects.  Ozu often focuses the camera on a single object and may switch between several before arriving at a shot significant to the plot.  Focusing on different objects leads the audience to wonder at their significance.  This wonder awakens a perspective of “mysteriousness” regarding everyday events and objects that is mono no aware.  Ozu’s tendency of circular stories and repetition is also in line with Zen Buddhism, as circular time is one of its key ideas.

LaFleur, William R. Suicide off the Edge of Explicability: Awe in Ozu and Kore'eda. Film History, Vol. 14, No. 2, Film and Religion (2002), pp. 158-165

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

This article is a stylistic analysis of Yasujiro Ozu.  It focuses on the techniques of five of his later films (Late Spring, Tokyo Story, Early Spring, Good Morning, and Late Autumn).  Specifically, it addresses plot, structure, editing, tempo, and scene.  Ozu plots are very straightforward because he saw the story as only a pretext for the film.  As such, his movies played like an episode of normal life.  The structure of Ozu films emphasize the idea of “return”. His films often end where they began.  In his editing, he does not much dialogue or character study to make his point.  He places the emphasis on what happens before or after the primary emotional event, rather than the event itself.  Regarding tempo, Ozu films take place completely in the present, and take place in “psychological time”, not clock-time.  The rate at which time passes is subject to the characters.  Finally, Ozu will often create scenes that resemble beautiful still-lives.

This article is useful to use in order to descirbe the style of “I was born, but…”.  Although the article discusses his later films, he uses many of the same stylistic techniquies in "I was born but...".  Many of the stylistic techniques mentioned in the article also appear in “I was born but…”.  The plot is very straightforward and there is no grand plot.  It simply details a small period of time in the life of two boys.  The major events are small things such as fighting or playing with other boys in the neighborhood, or going over to their father’s boss’ home to watch a movie. The structure also has the idea of “return”.  The film ends and begins with an interaction with the neighborhood boys.  Often times, the editing sends an implicit message of a character’s emotions rather than focusing overtly on it.  For example, after the father has been called a weakling and a nobody by his sons, there is a shot from his back that focuses on the fact that his posture is bent and he is holding a bottle of alcohol.  From this, the audience must infer that he is upset by the previous confrontation with his sons.  This is also a beautifully composed shot, which could be compared to a still painting as there is no action in it.  The tempo of the film is certainly in real time, and there are many shots with very little action.  There is a long scene in the middle of the film where the two boys simply eat rice.

Richie, Donald. "Yasujiro Ozu: The Syntax of his Films". Film QuarterlyVol. 17, No. 2 (Winter, 1963-1964), pp. 11-16