Ozu's Tokyo Story is generally regarded as one of the finest films ever made. Universal in its appeal, it is also considered to be 'particularly Japanese'. Exploring its universality and cultural specificity, this collection of specially commissioned essays demonstrates the multiple planes on which the film may be appreciated. The introduction outlines Ozu's career as both a contract director of a major studio and as a singular figure in Japanese film history, and also analyses the director's cinematic style, particularly his narrative strategies and spatial compositions. Other essays situate Ozu's cinema in its relationship to Hollywood film-making: his relationship to aspects of Japanese tradition, situating the film within artistic modes, religious systems and beliefs, and socio-cultural and familial formations. Also included is an analysis of how Ozu has been misunderstood in Western criticism.

On the 100th anniversary of the great director's birth, a book celebrating his greatest film.

"Substantially the book that devotees of the director have been waiting for: a full-length critical work about Ozu's life, career and working methods, buttressed with reproductions of pages from his notebooks and shooting scripts, numerous quotes from co-workers and Japanese critics, a great many stills and an unusually detailed filmography."—Sight and Sound Yasujiro Ozu, the man whom his kinsmen consider the most Japanese for all film directors, had but one major subject, the Japanese family, and but one major theme, its dissolution. The Japanese family in dissolution figures in every one of his fifty-three films. In his later pictures, the whole world exists in one family, the characters are family members rather than members of a society, and the ends of the earth seem no more distant than the outside of the house.

A re-interpretation of the master of Japanese cinema from a socio-historical perspectiveOne of the most well regarded of non-Western film directors, responsible for acknowledged classics like Tokyo Story (1953), Ozu Yasujiro worked during a period of immense turbulence for Japan and its population. This book offers a new interpretation of Ozus career, from his earliest work in the 1920s up to his death in 1963, focusing on Ozus depiction of the everyday life and experiences of ordinary Japanese people during a time of depression, war and economic resurgence. Firmly situating him within the context of the Japanese film industry, Woojeong Joo examines Ozus work as a studio director and his relation to sound cinema, and looks in-depth at his wartime experiences and his adaptation to post-war Japanese society. Drawing on Japanese materials not previously examined in western scholarship, this is a ground-breaking new study of a master of cinema.Case studies include:Ozus shAshimin films Ozus wartime films, including the script of The Flavour of Green Tea over RicePostwar script of The Moon Has RisenTokyo Story

Considered by many film critics and scholars as a master of Japanese Cinema, director Ozu Yasujiro still inspires filmmakers both within and outside of Japan. With fifteen never before published chapters in English by contributors from North America, Europe, and Japan, Reorienting Ozu explores the Japanese director's oeuvre and his lasting impact on global art cinema. Exploring major theoretical frameworks that characterize Ozu studies, chapters consider the various cultural factors that influenced the director's cinematic output, such as the anxiety of middleclass Japan in the 1930s, the censorship imposed by the US-occupation after World War II, and women's rights in Ozu's late work such as Tokyo Twilight (1957). Ultimately, chapters illuminate Ozu's influence on the directors of Japan and beyond. With the recent restoration and re-release of Ozu's early and late films, this volume provides an opportunity to examine not only the auteur's major works but also the relationships--both cultural and aesthetic--that are forged among directors across the world.

A luminous exploration of one filmmaker's work by another, an artist's personal journey, a manifesto

With a new introduction, acclaimed director and screenwriter Paul Schrader revisits and updates his contemplation of slow cinema over the past fifty years. Unlike the style of psychological realism, which dominates film, the transcendental style expresses a spiritual state by means of austere camerawork, acting devoid of self-consciousness, and editing that avoids editorial comment. This seminal text analyzes the film style of three great directors—Yasujiro Ozu, Robert Bresson, and Carl Dreyer—and posits a common dramatic language used by these artists from divergent cultures. The new edition updates Schrader’s theoretical framework and extends his theory to the works of Andrei Tarkovsky (Russia), Béla Tarr (Hungary), Theo Angelopoulos (Greece), and Nuri Bilge Ceylan (Turkey), among others. This key work by one of our most searching directors and writers is widely cited and used in film and art classes. With evocative prose and nimble associations, Schrader consistently urges readers and viewers alike to keep exploring the world of the art film.