Yasujiro Ozu

A Story of Floating Weeds

A Story of Floating Weeds

Rich in backstage atmosphere and class-conscious insight, A Story of Floating Weeds was one of Yasujiro Ozu’s final silent films, and it displays his complete mastery of the form. With a vivid sense of character and the world of rural Japan, he sketches a poignant tale of family secrets, jealousy, and creative community, buoyed by grace notes of humanist observation and by luminous black-and-white cinematography that shows his spare yet lyrical visuals at their most soulful.

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Film Info

  • Japan
  • 1934
  • 86 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.33:1
  • Japanese

Available In

Collector's Set

A Story of Floating Weeds / Floating Weeds: Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu

A Story of Floating Weeds / Floating Weeds

Blu-ray Box Set

1 Disc

$27.96

Collector's Set

A Story of Floating Weeds / Floating Weeds: Two Films by Yasujiro Ozu

A Story of Floating Weeds / Floating Weeds

DVD Box Set

2 Discs

$27.96

A Story of Floating Weeds
Cast
Takeshi Sakamoto
Kihachi
Choko Iida
Otsune
Koji (Hideo) Mitsui
Shinkichi
Rieko Yagumo
Otaka
Yoshiko Tsubouchi
Otoki
Tokkan Kozo
Tomibo
Reiko Tani
His father
Credits
Director
Yasujiro Ozu
Story by
"James Maki"
Script (after the American film The Barker) by
Tadao Ikeda
Cinematography
Hideo Mohara
Art direction
Toshio Hamada
Lighting by
Toshimichi Nakajima
Editing
Hideo Mohara
Cinematography assistants
Yuhara Atsuta
Cinematography assistants
Masao Irie

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Yasujiro Ozu

Director

Yasujiro Ozu
Yasujiro Ozu

Yasujiro Ozu has often been called the “most Japanese” of Japan’s great directors. From 1927, the year of his debut for Shochiku studios, to 1962, when, a year before his death at age sixty, he made his final film, Ozu consistently explored the rhythms and tensions of a country trying to reconcile modern and traditional values, especially as played out in relations between the generations. Though he is best known for his sobering 1953 masterpiece Tokyo Story, the apex of his portrayals of the changing Japanese family, Ozu began his career in the thirties, in a more comedic, though still socially astute, mode, with such films as I Was Born, But . . . and Dragnet Girl. He then gradually mastered the domestic drama during the war years and afterward, employing both physical humor, as in Good Morning, and distilled drama, as in Late Spring, Early Summer, and Floating Weeds. Though Ozu was discovered relatively late in the Western world, his trademark rigorous style—static shots, often from the vantage point of someone sitting low on a tatami mat; patient pacing; moments of transcendence as represented by the isolated beauty of everyday objects—has been enormously influential among directors seeking a cinema of economy and poetry.

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