The film's release was delayed by many months when Shochiku Studio's Shirô Kido felt the movie's story was too dark in tone. The film would go on to win Kinema Jumpo's first prize that year.
I Was Born, But... (1932) is included in the Eclipse Series 10, "Silent Ozu: Three Family Comedies," which is part of the Criterion Collection.
I Was Born, But... (1932) is included in Kinema Junpo Critic's Top 200 best Japanese films of all time.
Yasujirô Ozu, the artist called the most "Japanese" of Japanese directors was a voracious film buff more interested in Hollywood movies than his own national cinema early in his career. He was hired as an assistant cameraman at Shochiku, Japan's biggest film studio, in the early 1920s and (after a year off for military service, which he largely spent in the infirmary) soon worked his way up to assistant to director Tadamoto Ôkubo, who specialized in "nonsense" comedies." He made his directorial debut in 1927 with a period picture (it would turn out to be the only one in his career) that has not survived, and was soon making every type of genre. All were influenced by his love of Hollywood movies (he was a big fan of Ernst Lubitsch and Harold Lloyd) and he was flexed his creative muscles with tracking shots and dramatic angles and dynamic compositions while looking for his own voice and style. I Was Born, But... (1932) was actually Ozu's 24th feature film.