User Reviews

Slightly different from the Ozu's I've seen before, but still a rather wonderful little film. Its his first film after the war. Only Ozu could film the desolate streetscape of a devastated Japan and make it seem so homely and normal. Every scene is magnificently composed - the first few shots, showing ramshackle homes framed by a wirescape of crooked electric cables sets the scene perfectly. Even the simplest domestic scenes are presented so beautifully they give a dignity to the ordinary people represented in the film.

The story is (as usual with Ozu) as simple as can be. A small flea-bitten boy, a stray, follows a man home, and a small group of neighbours argue amongst themselves what to do with him. He is left with a bad tempered widow. What happens is familiar - he slowly melts her heart. But how its done is not so familiar. The boy is never shown as particularly lovable - he's a quiet bedwetter 'pees like a horse' as the woman says. There is little or none of the saccharine you'd expect from other film makers, Japanese or otherwise. Its just shown very straight, with no sentimentality. Oh, and its a comedy - some lovely, very funny scenes. The acting is fantastic. One particular scene, where the neighbours accompany a singer with a rhythm tapped with chopsticks on places is brilliant, it alone is worth getting the DVD to see it.

The only let down is the ending, which becomes a little preachy. But its forgivable in the context, just 2 years after the end of the war, where Ozu perhaps felt he should give the audience a bit of a message (although as all scripts went through rigid censorship at the time we can't be certain it was all his idea). There is an obvious 'we should all be nicer to each other' message in the movie, and it doesn't shirk for a moment from the poverty at the time, despite the light hearted tone. Its hard to put yourself in the shoes of the contemporary audience, but they must have been heartened to see people so real to their own experience on the screen, with no false optimism or over-dramatic pessimism, just a very real slice of life.

A beautiful little film by Ozu, only 72 minutes long, about a young boy who was apparently abandoned by his father. He shacks up with Tané (exquisitely played by Choko Iida) for the first night, but when she can't find his father, he becomes a permanent fixture in her household. At first, she's bitter and mean about it. A middle-age widow, she believes, shouldn't have to deal with snotty-nosed bedwetters. But eventually her resolve weakens and she finds that she has missed a lot by never having had a child. The plotline is predictable and a little cliche (it's the kind of movie that Vittorio de Sica would be criticized relentlessly by trendy critics if he had directed it), but the breezy style of Ozu makes everything wonderful. It's really funny at times, and always very touching. I think it's the most enjoyable Ozu film, with the possible exception of I Was Born But..., that I've ever seen. 9/10.

Japanese drama from Shochiku and director Yasujiro Ozu. Poor second-hand merchant O-Tane (Choko Iida) is put in a tough spot when her neighbors bring her a very young boy (Hohi Aoki) and ask her to take care of him. It seems the child was abandoned, and after searching for some time, no family for him could be found. O-Tane angrily agrees, but her grumpy exterior slowly softens as she spends more time with the quiet child. Also featuring Chishu Ryu, Reikichi Kawamura, Takeshi Sakamoto, Mitsuko Yoshikawa, and Eitaro Ozawa.

This was Ozu's first film after a five year break during WW2. It seems a warm return home, as his style is intact, and many of the same familiar Shochiku players return. Ozu regular Iida gets a spotlight role as the cranky old widow who slowly warms to becoming a surrogate mother. The film is also of interest for its glimpse of post-war Japan, and the struggles and hardships of maintaining a life in the rubble left behind. My only complaint would that, at 71 minutes, it's a bit too short.

Record of a Tenement Gentleman by Yasujiro Ozu is a heartwarming story of the power of love to heal the hardest heart. In this case the heart belongs to Tane (Shoko Lida), a stern and unforgiving middle-aged widow whose life is turned upside down when a taciturn little boy is brought to her home by a fortuneteller, Tashiro (Chishu Ryu). The boy, Kohei (Hohi Aoki) was lost or abandoned in Chigasaki and followed Tashiro all the way home. After Kohei wets his bed, Tane scolds him in a gruff manner and tries to pass him off to her neighbors but nobody seems to want to care for him.

Tane takes the boy back to Chigasaki to look for his father (Eitaro Ozawa) but learns that he has left for Tokyo. She returns home and reluctantly agrees to take care of the child a while longer. Shoko Lida beautifully recreates Tane's character showing her to be both tough and tender, her hangdog facial expression indicating that perhaps she is more burdened down by life than cold and rejecting. When the frightened boy runs away after being scolded one more time, Tane realizes that she has begun to have affection for him. Tane and Tashiro now belatedly discover how can children contribute to the quality of life and both develop a new understanding and compassion for the condition of children in postwar Japan. Record of a Tenement Gentleman is another small masterpiece from Ozu.

Ozu's Record of a Tenement Gentleman, 1947. B/w, 72 minutes. Original title "Nagaya Shinshiroku ~ (長屋紳士録 ).

Viewed at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival of 2003. One of the best films seen here that year was a little known Japanese film, in the Ozu retrospective sidebar entitled, "RECORD OF A TENEMENT DWELLER" made just after the war in 1947. This was Ozu's return to filmmaking for Shochiku after four years of military service in China. The film is the story of a simple unmarried woman who is forced, much against her will, to take in a small boy, apparently abandoned in the postwar shattered Tokyo hustle and bustle. After much hostility toward the child, she finally realizes how much he has filled the void in her life and that she in fact loves him -- but only does this realization hit her when the father reappears to repossess his lost child. A simple story so directly told that it sneaks up on you like a time-bomb and makes you realize that your heart was crying -- but only ten minutes after the film is over! An early masterpiece from the master of Zen and the Art of telling stories on film, and an incredibly subtle, yet bombshell, performance by the main actress Chôko Iida, in my book, a retroactive Best Actress Oscar for the year that was. Iida was extremely active in Japanese silent pictures from 1923 on and had already appeared in supporting roles in three prewar Ozu films; "An Inn in Tokyo", (1935) the first version of "Floating Weeds" (1934), and "Dekigoro" (A Passing Fancy, 1933), but this performance when she was already pushing fifty was her acting apotheosis. Unfortunately Ozu's uniquely stylized films were not discovered in the west until after his death in 1963 and are only now becoming recognized little by little in astute cinema circles as the quiet unhurried masterpieces which they are.

This is a simple story about a fortune teller (Chishu Ryu, who 2 years later would be in "Late Spring" looking like he aged 25 years) who brings home a lost boy. No one wants to take over the burden of caring for the kid, but Otane eventually has to (played by Lida Choko). She clearly wants to get rid of him after going to the place where the kid and his father lived, to find out the father deserted him. He wets the bed and thinks she'll throw him out anyway, because she shows no affection for the boy, but gradually warms to him. Ozu's film is simply told, but there is a sociological underpinning to it that is complex. This situation of deserted children in war and post war Japan had to be a significant one and it is told plainly but effectively. In the small community (with wide open spaces where buildings should be), there is camaraderie and that is heartwarming. It is a fairly short film, just 72 minutes, but the length of the film is perfect. Like many of Ozu's films, this features many of the actors/actresses that were in other films of his, but that is good. They know their roles so well and play them well. Not a masterpiece, but a worthy film to watch.

It's such a shame that Ozu wasn't more of an outdoor director, because I've just found out his landscape shots are some of the most beautiful I have ever seen. This is one of Ozu's most beautiful movies.

As always, Chôko Iida is absolutely amazing. It's a beautiful story, with a lot of light, funny moments and tender, emotional ones as well. It's not very different from Ozu's pre-war movies, but as such it's equally beautiful. I was somehow disappointed for Ozu not exploring even more the tenement's habitants, but overall I was satisfied with Chôko Iida performance and the tender story of the bond between her and a child.

I am struck by what a horrid old lady Chôko Iida is. Logically I can't blame her. She is not used to children when she has semi-orphan Hôhi Aoki dumped on her, for no clear reason. She scolds the boy for being a boy and for being so stubborn in denying he ate some dried persimmons. When it turns out he didn't (although I think the fellow who claimed he did it might have simply been trying to get the kid out of trouble), she is upset with him because he won't accept her apology. He does not act in the formal manner and rhythms of the adults she is used to and this irritates her.

I get it, even though she mistreats the boy and he runs away. She resents him for this too. then he is brought back and she becomes grandmotherly, although she constantly asks for him to praise her good behavior. When his father comes to collect him, she decides to go adopt a child.

Ozu directed this movie six years after his previous one -- he had been drafted in the interim and the sort of movie he would direct was this sort of small-scale character study. Unfortunately, the implied character change in Miss Lida strikes me as implausible. I think it may have seemed that way to Ozu. The final shot, where presumably she will look for an adoptive son, of of a statue with a bunch of youngsters lolling around, smoking cigarettes and other such anti-social behavior. It's a plea for people to help out these children. Only, please, not the old lady in this movie.

It's far too sentimental a movie for the usually clear-eyed Ozu. Perhaps this was the movie he had to direct in order to be approved for work by the occupying American forces. In any case, his work in his chosen genre would quickly become marvelous.

Postwar Ozu, and by contrast to prewar films, little has changed; clear, composed eye, quietly enduring lives, even in the face of near-complete destruction.

Once more, a primary point lies in the edifying fable of the thing. The father is absent, authority if you will, core social integrity, always a looming absence in Ozu, and the orphaned kid will have to rely on the fundamental kindness of the world. Of course that world rises to the occasion, overcomes ego, harshness, in this case no doubt fostered by the hard reality of the times. Instead of scavenging alleys for nails to piece back together destroyed homes, it is asserted that selfless love should take care of that.

This is asserted in a clumsily unsubtle way, straight to the camera. Ozu was back at Shochiku from wartorn Manchuria, and it should not be underestimated, so were many Japanese, back from whatever gruelling role they were forced to play in the war.

To better understand this conservative need for closure, you have to note the way Ozu closes the film. The woman wanting to take care of another orphaned kid is pointed to the direction of Saigo's statue in Ueno Park - where it stands to this day. Saigo was a popular hero famous in conventional history for the last stand of the old samurai faction against plans for a modernized Japan. The ill-advised Tom Cruise film portrays the events.

This is enough to give us pause. Here's a director who had been unerringly forward-looking 15 years ago, had fervently embraced modern foreign film and widely referenced Western mores, no longer a youthful cinephile but sobered from the experience of war, who points for inspiration to this paragon of samurai virtue and ethos. Japan might as well forget the bold experiment with an empire that ended in such humiliating defeat, and look back instead to the simpler times when feudal lords and their police maintained coherence of the world.

This is a pity. The eye is clear but dulled by emotion, making for languid flow but without insight. Japan would have to wait another 10 years for the next generation of forward-looking filmmakers to look deeper into the ruins.

The master Ozu gave us another touching movie using several ellements of the true cinema, firstly puting in action a clever plot where the all characters living in poor neighborhood in Tokyo in a post war era, second exploring olds and already alone widowers when came out an alleged lost little boy, he puts their peaceful life upside dow all, specially a not yet old woman called Otane who has a little business, trying send him back to his father without success, now she needs accustom with the quiet boy that insist to believe that his father will be back soon, so magnificent little tale told with mastery by the great Yasujiro Ozu!!!

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First watch: 2018 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 8.5

It's a slightly odd film even for the Japanese but it was Yasujiro Ozu's first after a gap of five years after the war. A poor young boy follows him back to another home as he seems be have been abandoned by his father who it seems was looking for work. Back at his tenement housing he hopes that someone will look after him. Sees nobody keen and then they get a widow to take him on. Clearly she is not happy and several times she 'shoos' him away just like she might a pigeon. She reluctantly gives him the night but as he wets the bed and in the morning she puts his bedding on the line but amazingly, she simply gives him a fan and has him stand there to dry it. There is no talk about the war although there is talk of 'orphans' and she doesn't really want the boy but gradually she is not as hard on him but it is strange that she doesn't wash him, even though he clearly has fleas. There is a sad ending and we see the Saigo statue in Ueno Park where orphans play beside their popular hero and his dog.

(1947)Record of a Tenement Gentleman/Nagaya shinshiroku (In Japanese with English subtitles) DRAMA

Co-written and directed by Yasujiro Ozu wth neighbor Tashiro (Chishu Ryu) dumping an abandoned young boy Kohei (Hohi Aoki) onto his neighbor's front doorstep. Tashiro's neighbor is played by movie veteran actress Choko Iida, she plays senior citizen, Otane. At first, she loathes the young boy since she has some misconceptions who young boys is supposed to act like, but over time she eventually grew to accepting him. The movie is subtle at it's best as the director allows the viewers to observe it's relationship between grumpy old woman and the young child.

By any modern conception of film-making Yasujiro Ozu's approach here seems relatively unsophisticated and basic, but the simple appearance belies a keen mindfulness that's plainly admirable. Ozu demonstrates an outstanding eye for shot composition that is at once precise, spartan, and unremarkable, yet underhandedly artful and aesthetically pleasing. While 'Nagaya shinshiroku' is well made - the crew put in good work - and the story is duly interesting, it's nonetheless true that the filmmaker's orchestration of shots and scenes is the most readily impressive aspect of the feature. By that fundamental standpoint, it's a small pleasure to watch, especially in light of some of the scenery we get to take in over the course of these 70 minutes.

In fairness, such apparent uncomplicated visual presentation pairs neatly with what is a rather straightforward narrative. We're greeted with the fringes of a city pulling itself together in the wake of war, a peek at the lives of those living in a particular range of housing - and in their midst, the introduction of a lost child. There's not much to it on the surface, yet as the length progresses and other elements peek through, ever so slowly a deeper, quietly lovely story takes shape, and appreciable broad themes. Nothing about this movie is immediate or grabbing, though for those able and willing to sit and absorb, what gradually unfolds is warm, inviting, and satisfying. Through it all the cast give fine performances, though of them all Choko Iida certainly stands out most for a gratifyingly nuanced bit of acting in what becomes the central role.

The last few minutes become a little heavy-handed in their treatment of the themes, made all the more notable in contrast with the pointedly subdued tone the picture has otherwise adopted. Still, provided one is on board with a title that is so muted and measured in its storytelling, 'Nagaya shinshiroku' really is a splendid, rewarding viewing experience. I can understand how it won't appeal to all viewers, as it's a piece that is quite leisurely in imparting its tale. Ultimately that's part of what makes it so worthwhile, however, with Ozu's arrangement of shots placating us in the meantime. I don't think this is so essential a film that one needs to go out of their way for it, but if you have the chance to watch, this is well worth such a small amount of one's time.

Director Yasujiro Ozu has produced a very concise film in "Record of a Tenement Gentleman". The film time is 72 minutes, there are few characters, most of the action takes place in limited interior space, and the dialogue is sparse through much of the film.

A young abandoned boy is grudgingly housed by an older lady who chafes at the burden. She chastises him and calls him "stupid boy". The child doesn't say much. But eventually--due to the human "need" for interaction and interdependence--she learns to tolerate him.

This Ozu film feels different to me from the other two I have watched. It is the post-war era and Ozu manages to find humor in the quirks of individuals. Many characters are untrusting, but we sense a warmth whenever, in this stark reality, someone extends a hand or shares a moment of closeness.

Eventually, this tale of woman and child becomes a larger story about a nation. And a call for that nation to respond dutifully. The final scene is a little oversentimental, but easy to forgive due to the overall quality of the storytelling.

It wasn't just the use of "Precious" in one of the subtitles -this Ozu film had me thinking in Hollywood mode -wouldn't it be a perfect remake vehicle for Mo'Nique to followup her success in PRECIOUS? This odd way of thinking was not as far out as I first imagined in the early reels -by film's end Ozu had demonstrated a filmmaking format quite similar to that used by Lee Daniels all these decades later.

With such radically different styles it is not obviously apparent, but both films are in essence preachy social statements masquerading as entertainment. As others have mentioned, post-war censorship may have forced this on Ozu, just as having Oprah (not to mention Tyler Perry) and the burden of such a famous best-selling book caused Daniels' film to be so heavy-handed in the Western Union department.

It fascinated me that the settings, dissimilar on the surface (post-war devastated Japan, modern New York City with its suffering underclass) had much in common. The irascible old heroine, who we come to like in spite of first impressions a couple of reels before she becomes a true softie is a tailor-made role for Mo'Nique, softening the rough, rough edges of her legendary PRECIOUS turn. We never got to like her character in PRECIOUS since she was such a monster of an abuser, but we did come to understand her.

Choko Iida is masterful as Tane, who unwillingly takes the lost boy into her care, only to fall in love with him in time-honored Silent Era Pathos fashion. She does plenty of schtick, but keeps it under control in a way Mo'Nique could benefit from, after viewing this movie. Co-star Chishu Ryu, most recognizable cast member due to his classic work in so many famous Ozu films, gets to strut his stuff in a memorable scene leading all his friends in a chant/song with elements of a sea shanty to it -very well-recorded, as is all the dialog, in direct sound.

While this is clearly a minor work in his canon, Ozu's patented visual compositions were a treat throughout, and I especially enjoyed the scene of the two protagonists at a lonely beach (similar to the post-war malaise beach of the all-time classic Gerard Philipe film UNE SI JOLIE PETITE PLAGE, only not as gloomy), which suggested several Japanese paintings I've seen depicted on the nation's postage stamps. When our heroine attempts to abandon the boy there, Ozu so subtly injects his only moving camera shots of the entire film - a lesson to current music-video-addled directors on the power of using camera movements sparingly and only when necessary.

Film missed perfection for me due to its false ending -there is a wonderful buildup and resolution which cried out to be the finish, but is followed by a tacked-on twist ending (not as bad as is done in so many modern horror films, but still way too gimmicky) that tried to make for a bittersweet resolution plus that all-important social commentary on the plight of orphans and kids on their own post-war.