This is a film which is unusual to me. It was directed by Yasujiro Ozu, and starred Tokihiko Okada as the leading man and Emiko Yagumo as his supportive wife. He works for an insurance company and is fired for coming to the too- strenuous support of a co-worker, also fired. It is the height of the depression in Tokyo, and he searches for a long period of time for a job, working for awhile as a person handing out flyers for a restaurant.
For the most part, the movie shows scenes of quiet domesticity which I found remarkably realistic. The couple has three children, a boy and girl about seven or eight and an infant. The play scenes between the older two were very natural and without overt acting. The family faces destitution after he loses his job, but there never is any overt hardship. Apparently handing out flyers was a serious loss of face, because the wife tells her husband that it is humiliating. Their daughter gets food poisoning and the husband sells his wife's kimonos without her permission to pay the bills for her treatment in the hospital. There's a scene of quiet heartbreak as she finds out while the children are happily playing, and she cries as she joins them.
"Tokyo Chorus" reminds me of Jean Renoir's "The Southerner" as the poor family faces hardship after hardship without bickering, anger, or resentment, maintaining a loving relationship among the entire family beyond all bounds that I would call realistic, but still I enjoyed watching the movie.
The man who hired the husband to hand out flyers is a man with contacts in the education department, and he gets our hero a job teaching English at a girls' school in a remote area. It's a job, so the husband and wife agree to take it, hoping that they can return eventually to Tokyo, but the movie ends with the man in tears over leaving.
It's an interesting movie, as I think it offers a view into domestic Japanese life in the early 30s. Now if I could only figure out what the name means.
For the most part, the movie shows scenes of quiet domesticity which I found remarkably realistic. The couple has three children, a boy and girl about seven or eight and an infant. The play scenes between the older two were very natural and without overt acting. The family faces destitution after he loses his job, but there never is any overt hardship. Apparently handing out flyers was a serious loss of face, because the wife tells her husband that it is humiliating. Their daughter gets food poisoning and the husband sells his wife's kimonos without her permission to pay the bills for her treatment in the hospital. There's a scene of quiet heartbreak as she finds out while the children are happily playing, and she cries as she joins them.
"Tokyo Chorus" reminds me of Jean Renoir's "The Southerner" as the poor family faces hardship after hardship without bickering, anger, or resentment, maintaining a loving relationship among the entire family beyond all bounds that I would call realistic, but still I enjoyed watching the movie.
The man who hired the husband to hand out flyers is a man with contacts in the education department, and he gets our hero a job teaching English at a girls' school in a remote area. It's a job, so the husband and wife agree to take it, hoping that they can return eventually to Tokyo, but the movie ends with the man in tears over leaving.
It's an interesting movie, as I think it offers a view into domestic Japanese life in the early 30s. Now if I could only figure out what the name means.