Ozu Yasujiro

Ozu Yasujiro

‘Views from One Foot above the Floor’

Ozu as auteur • Complete grip on film-making in every stage

• Ozu wrote all his late scripts with Noda Kogo and gave meticulous and final instructions on production design and photography to his crew (Ozu Gumi) members.

Ozu as auteur

Mr. Ozu looked happiest when he was engaged in writing a scenario with Mr. Kogo Noda, at the latter's cottage on the tableland of Nagano Prefecture. By the time he finished writing a script, after about four months' effort, he had already made up every image in every shot, so that he never changed the scenario after we went on the set. The words were so polished up that he would not allow us even a single mistake.

Ozu as auteur

• Ozu had most of things in his head: set designs, locations, compositions, lighting, camera positions, camera movements, acting, length of shots, the ways in which film is cut

• Once his style was established, he never changed it.

• Stylization

Ozu as auteur

• Ozu-gumi (the Ozu crew)

• The same crew for many films with Ozu as their absolute head

• This was made possible in Japan’s studio system

Ozu as auteur

• Late Spring (1949)Producer: Yamamoto

TakeshiScript: Ozu Yasujiro

and Noda KogoCamera: Atsuta YuharuEditor: Hamamura

YoshiyasuMusic: Ito SenjiArt: Hamada Tatsuo

• Tokyo Monogatari (1953)

Producer: Yamamoto Takeshi

Script: Ozu Yasujiro and Noda Kogo

Camera: Atsuta YuharuEditor: Hamamura

YoshiyasuMusic: Saito KojunArt : Hamada Tatsuo

Ozu as auteur

• Equinox Flower(1958)

Producer:Yamamoto Takeshi


Camera: Atsuta Yuharu

Editor: Hamamura Yoshiyasu

Music: Kojun Saito

Art: Hamada Tatsuo

• Autumn Afternoon(1962)

Producer:Yamanouchi Shizuo


Camera: Atsuta YuharuEditor: Hamamura

YoshiyasuMusic: Kojun SaitoArt: Hamada Tatsuo

Ozu as auteur • Photographer: Atsuta Yuharu (or Yushun)

• Atsuta was an assistant cameraman for Ozu for 6 years and his first photographer for 25 years from 1937 (What Did the Lady Forget?) to 1962. After Ozu’s death he did not work for any other director.

Ozu as auteur• Ozu was the only

director for whom Atsuta operated his camera. Atsuta had learned what Ozu wanted before he became the first cameraman and he did not need any instruction.

• Complete grasp of Ozu’s intention.

Ozu as auteur

Though years’ experience as an assistant … I’ve learned what Ozu wanted. I didn’t bother to ask him about the camera position; Occasionally he said, “I don’t like to look down on people. A down shot makes me feel as though I’m looking down. So I like the camera on the horizontal.”

-- Yûharu Atsuta

Ozu as auteur Noda Kogo• He co-wrote with Ozu 13

scripts of the 15 post-war films.

• For Ozu the script is to a film director as the blueprint is to an architect.

- Avoid ‘dramatic’ plots- Ordinary stories of ordinary

people- Birth, growth, marriage,

aging and death – ‘the wheel of life’

Ozu as auteur

• Scripts written jointly

by Ozu and Noda

• Few instructions of action

appeared on the scripts

and no indications of shot

sizes, angles, points of view, camera movements, lightings etc. Everything was already in Ozu’s mind. Once a scenario is completed, not a single word is added or taken away (almost!)

Ozu as auteur

• Ozu kept using the same actors: Ryu Chishu, Hara Setsuko, Sugimura Haruko, Tanaka Kinuyo, Yamamura So, Nakamura Nobuo, Tono Eijiro

• Ozu completely dictates the ways in which actors deliver dialogues and act, allowing them no freedom and improvisation.

Ozu as auteur

• Performers who appeared regularly in Ozu’s filmsunderstood his intention and method completely.

Ozu as auteur

• More regular faces in Ozu’s films.

Ozu as auteur

• Rigid, artificial action - lack of spontaneity (criticism)

• However, Ozu won complete trust from actors

• Stylized ‘beauty’ - sense of order

Ozu operating the camera by himself.

Ozu editing the film himself.

Ozu directing performance

Ozu’s Visual Style (Mise-en-scène)

Style derives from the consistent use of certain techniques.

Mise-en-scène - Motionless camera - Low-level camera placement (one foot

above the floor) - One lens (with focal length of 50mm)


• The camera placed about one foot from the floor - low level shot without moving camera (no pans or travelling)

• Slight low-angle shots


- Horizontal compositionc.f. Mizoguchi’s diagonal composition


• Composition - horizontal and (slight) low angle while Mizoguchi’s favourite composition is diagonal and high-angle


• Perspectival placement of a group of people

• Careful, geometrical arrangement of screen


• - Frontal composition: actors (almost) directly looking at and talking to camera

• Unconventional and against classic filmmaking rules


• More frontal compositions


• More frontal composition


• Frontal compositions

• Faces turned to the camera


Uniform set design• Middle-class Japanese household• Shoji (sliding paper door) wide open and shallow

perspective with background view is partly blocked by a wall.


• More examples of Ozu’s favourite interior composition

• Empty tatami in foreground, figures in the middle ground and small garden and wall at background


• The same interior design consistently used


• Japanese architecture and horizontal composition

• The camera’s straight-on, horizontal angle and low position creates horizontal composition.

• Lack of depth - shallow composition

Ozu’s Colour Films

• The same mise-en-scéne is employed in colour films

• Repeated uses of the same colour - red


• Red is used in ‘pillow’ shots

Ozu’s Visual Style (Montage)

Montage (Editing) - Rhythmic editing (nearly fixed lengths of

shots according to sizes) ‘Ozu’s low camera position is not for long

takes. It makes a ryhthm from a combination of medium long shot, and reverse medium-long shot. Consequently, how long one shot lasts becomes very important.

- Cuts - no dissolve, fade or wipe)

Fade (in)


• Almost perfect visual match in shot-and-reverse-shots

• Drinking sake from the cup held in the right hand; matching waistcoats and ties; the same hair-style; the pillar at their back on the screen right.


• Even the position of the beer bottle is the same, on the right of each character and the label of the beer is facing to the camera in either shot.


• ELLIPSIS - narrative device used in literature to leave out a (large) portion of an action, an event or situation.

• Ozu frequently uses this device.• The viewer learns of important narrative events

only after they have occurred.• Tokyo Monogatari: The viewer does not see the

grandmother falls ill - the viewer knows it only when her son and daughter receive a telegram; her death taking place between scenes: in one scene, they are at her bedside and in the next they are mourning her death


- ‘Pillow shots’ or ‘still life shots’ which are not directly related with narratives and function as transitional insertions.


• Noriko gets a phone call at work telling that her mother-in-law is ill; medium shot of her at desk with sound of typewriters


• Cut to a low-angle shot of a building under construction with riveting machine sounds and music


• Cut to another shot of the construction site with the same sounds


• Then a cut to Koichi’s clinic with his sister, Shige present. The new scene begins.


• Meanings of pillow shot• Contemplative and aesthetic • Related to story-telling mechanism: frequent

uses of ellipsis (a segment of a narrative is deliberately omitted)

• Pillow shot indicates that an ellipsis occurs.

Ozu’s Film Style

Ignoring the standard continuity editing

- 180 degree rule

- Omission of the establishing shot

- using space of 360 degrees

Ozu’s Montage: the 180 degree rule

Ozu comfortably ignores the 180 degree rule: a man drinking tea facing towards the frame right

Ozu’s Montage: the 180 degree rule

In the next shot, the man facing the frame left. A grave mistake in the classical montage style

Meanings of Ozu’s visual style

Restrained and minimalist cinematic style• Ozu’s film style is often compared to Zen

- ‘Ozu’s simplicity of style derives from the fact that his art is essentially religious in nature. It is an art predicated on the Zen Buddhism…’ David A. Cook- Mystery of the everyday

‘… it is only through the mundane and the common that the transcendent can be expressed.’ Donald Ritchie


- Contemplative and meditative quality; the expression of quietness, motionless, emptiness and nothingness


- Self-abandonment

yielding to fate and destiny without

conscious struggle

- The tombstone of Ozu’s grave – ‘ 無’ Nothing


• How much are Ozu’s images religious expression?

• How closely are Ozu’s films related with Zen Buddhism and its spirit?

Ozu Yasujiro

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