Tokyo Chorus

Combining three prevalent genres of the day—the student comedy, the salaryman film, and the domestic drama—Ozu created this warmhearted family comedy, and demonstrated that he was truly coming into his own as a cinema craftsman. The setup is simple: Low wage–earning dad Okajima is depending on his bonus, and so are his wife and children, yet payday doesn't exactly go as planned. Exquisite and economical, Ozu's film alternates between brilliantly mounted comic sequences and heartrending working-class realities.

Japan
1931
90 minutes
Black & White
1.33:1
Japanese

Available In

Collector's Set

Silent Ozu—Three Family Comedies

DVD Box Set

3 Discs

$35.96

Cast & Credits

Cast

Tokihiko Okada: Shinji Okajima
Emiko Yagumo: Tsuma Sugako
Hideo Sugawara: Sono Chounan
Hideko Takamine: Sono Choujo
Tatsuo Saito: Omura Sensei
Chouko Iida: Sensei no tusma

Credits

Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Screenplay: Komatsu Kitamura
Screenplay: Kogo Noda
Cinematography: Hideo Shigehara
Editing: Hideo Shigehara

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Yasujiro Ozu

Director

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.