Yasujiro Ozu: The Syntax of His Films
Author(s): Donald Richie
Source: Film Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Winter, 1963-1964), pp. 11-16
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1210862
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11
DONALD RICHIE
Yasujiro Ozu:
The Syntax of His Films
In the Autumn issue of Sight and Sound, Tom Milne surveys Ozu's work
on the basis of a series of films recently seen in London. Five Ozu films will
shortly tour the United States (Late Spring, Tokyo Story, Early Spring, Good
Morning, and Late Autumn) and the following stylistic analysis explicates
some of the methods we will soon be able to observe in these pictures.
With Ozu, as with Antonioni or Resnais, the
critic may speak of grammar, of vocabulary, of
syntax-something which one cannot do with
Mizoguchi, with Bergman, or even with Truffaut,
intuitive directors all. Ozu is not an intuitive
film artist, he is a master craftsman; for
him, film is not expression but function. In an
Ozu film, as in Japanese architecture, you can
see all the supports, and each support is as
necessary as any other. He uses neither paint
nor wallpaper; he uses natural wood. He makes
a film as a carpenter makes a house. The finished
object one may measure, one may inspect,
one may compare. But within this object,
as within the house, lives the human, the
immeasurable, the nonfunctional. It is this
combination of the static and the living, of
form and content, which makes the films of
Ozu the compelling emotional experiences they
are and, at the same time, the wonderfully
hand-tooled containers which they also are.
The opening
funeral
scene in
AxxBronR
(Setsuko Hara,
Yoko Tsukasa,
and
Ryu Chishu) ~?s-
-;;;I~
I ~wa~psli~e~s~n~
d
~ n: ai-?8'
p
~1?
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12
I OZU
GRAMMAR
Ozu, like Antonioni, knows that plot is worthless
because it is manipulated. It is life used
and consequently untrue: life must at least
appear to be gratuitous to appear true. Antonioni
believes that "the episode is the only fit
unit for film" and this Ozu too believes-with
the difference that he believed it thirty years
before Antonioni did. For this reason, though
the chronicle of an Ozu picture is fairly
straightforward, you cannot make a pr6cis.
Everything Ozu-like evaporates if you merely
tell the story, for the reason that story (or,
more often, merely anecdote) is but a pretext
for the film, the real reason for which is revelation
of character. Ozu therefore restricts
content (a plot is an indulgence-it is too
easy) and, in the same way, he restricts his
technique: hence his celebrated avoidance of
these elements of film grammar which other
directors find indispensable. Dissolves are
"cheating"; fades are "merely attributes of the
camera"; dollies, pans, etc., are "uninteresting."
The only punctuation which Ozu allows
himself is the simple cut; the only camera
position, that of the person seated upon tatami,
his eyes about three feet from floor level,
the traditional attitude for talking, for watching,
for listening. He allows himself three
kinds of shots-the classical three of primitive
cinema. (1) The long shot is used to show
solitude, precisely because it isolates; or humor,
for it isolates and makes apprehendable;
or aesthetic beauty, because it gets us far
enough from it to see it all. (2) The middle
shot, the standard unit of the Ozu film, is the
"business" unit during which most of the action
occurs. (3) The close-up, used for heightened
moments, either with or without dialogue,
is used rarely and never allowed to
enlarge itself into the "big" close-up. Each
shot has its place within the sequence and the
order of the sequence is usually 1 - 2 - 3 - 2 -
1. Musically, it is the a-b-a pattern, simple
binary form, one of the most immediate and
satisfying formal experiences possible, through
reason (in films as in music) of its being firmly
apprehendable, and perhaps for the more
metaphysical reason of its being circular: a
balanced, continuous geometrical form congenial
to the human mind. The sequence in
Ozu is the paragraph (the Ozu film has no
"chapters") and within these paragraphs the
shot becomes the "sentence."
STRUCTURE
Just as the sequence in Ozu is circular, so is
the basic form of the entire picture. It would
be difficult to find an Ozu film that did not
end where it began-though such an atypical
picture would be Soshun (Early Spring
1956). Often, indeed, this effect of form
becomes "formal," even-in the best sensemannered.
The neighbor lady appears twice
in Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari-1953),
once in the first reel, and once in the last. In
the first the old couple is preparing their trip
and she comments upon it; in the last reel the
wife is dead, the husband will remain where
he is alone (the opposite certainly of travel)
and this too she obliquely comments upon.
Ohayo: (Good Morning-1959) like its ancestor,
Umareta a Mita Keredo, (I was Born,
But . .. (-1932) ends precisely where it
began and the adventures of the little boys
(very meaningful in the latter film; merely
comic in the former) count for nothing other
than the emotional experience which they give
us. In most Ozu films the structure presumes
this "return" and it is this which makes the
final reels of these pictures so compelling. The
idea of the "return" (like the idea of the circle)
is something which all of us find emotionally
compelling-a somewhat common, if
not vulgar, example of its great filmic effect is
in the two celebrated 180 pans (before and
after Micheline Presle's death) in Le Diable
au Corps. Musically, it is more instantly apprehendable.
The master of the "return" is
Mozart, because of the freshness, the surprise,
the astonishing "newness" of the sound when
he completes the return in a rondo. For one
thing we are back in the home key, always a
grateful feeling; and for another we return
home (as in the finale of the Jupiter) doubly
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OZU
13
enriched; we are surprised by the new beauty
of the familiar. The formal parallel to Ozu is
precise because the effect is never merely formal,
the "return" is not contrived (as it is all
too often in the pictures of, say, John Huston),
nor is it for its own effect (as in Carn6),
an aestheticism for its own sake. Rather, with
true art, that art which hides art, Ozu triumphs
in making this necessary formal device
appear natural. Perhaps the main reason for
this is that the structure of the Ozu film
appears so logical-there is a definite reason
for each shot. Even in Antonioni (who shortened
L'Avventura himself) shots and sequences
may be removed. Remove one shot from
an Ozu picture and you damage it irreparably.
The logic which controls the structure is responsible
for this. Take, for example, the
extremely logical way which Ozu will move us
from one sequence to another. He feels it
important that we keep our bearings, that we
do not get lost. In Akibiyori (Late Autumn-
1960), as in most Ozu films, there is, at the
beginning of a sequence, a "still" shot showing
either the location (the bridge) or the place,
the wall on which there is a picture of a
bridge and over which are the ripples of
reflected water from the river) or the particularity
(an object in the room itself, a lamp or
a single vase) - we always know where we
are. This is true even if great distances are
involved: the Kyoto sequence of Banshun
(Late Spring-1949) begins with a "still" shot
of typical and unmistakable Kyoto hills; in
Tokyo Monogatari, the cities of Onomichi,
Tokyo, Atami, and Osaka, are always introduced
by, respectively, still shots of, the strait
and the graveyard, factory chimneys, the
wharf and beachfront, and Osaka Castle.
Often these make a comment on the film (as
does the Onomichi graveyard); thus in
Soshun, in order to get us from the suburbs to
downtown Tokyo, we are given three shots:
the first shows the suburbs, a few men in
white shirts (in Japan an office worker actually
is a "white-collar" worker) walking to the
station; the second shows, somewhere nearer
the city, many more workers going into a
larger station; and, the third, Tokyo Station
itself, with literally thousands of men going to
their offices. Thus we are bodily moved and at
the same time are shown something relevant
to the ethos of the film, which is concerned
with the anonymous life of one of these workers.
It is telling, too, that in these three shots
Ozu deliberately chose for the second a location
which is actually in a direct line from the
first location. It would be possible to see this
if you yourself actually took the train trip.
Ozu never lies about geography, unlike any
other film director now alive. The taxi-ride in
the first reel of Ochazuke no Aji (The Flavor
of Green Tea Over Rice-1952) is literal, the
visual continuity outside the window is just as
it really would be; the train-ride to Tokyo in
the opening reels of Banshun is chronologically
accurate; so is the hiking trip in Soshun
-first the island of Enoshima in the background
and then Ozu computes his time and
for the next shots the walkers are passing the
oddly-shaped rock which only a person familiar
with this coast would know is precisely
where he shows it to be. This logical concern
for geography is worth commenting upon
because it is a strong indication of the scrupulousness
of Ozu-a quality which is most
noticeable in his treatment of character, and
in his editing.
EDITING
All of Ozu's technique has only one obiect
-the revelation of character. His waiting, listening
camera records, not the heights of emotion
but those moments, those signs, which
both precede and come after such momentsthese
little tropisms through which true emotion
is to be apprehended. The "portraits"
which he thus achieves of character are typical
of the richness of Ozu's world: the fathers
alone at the end of Tokyo Monogatari, Hitori
Musuko (The Only Son-1936), Tokyo Boshoku
(Tokyo Twilight-1956), or Higanbana
(Equinox Flower-1958); the pleasure of the
mother listening to the radio in Higanbana, of
the father in the train in the same film, of the
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OZU
,,,, ~~:
a
s
The married couple (Ryo Ikebe and
Chikage Awashima) in SosHuN.
father at the Noh drama in Banshun-one
could continue such a list indefinitely. But one
of the ways in which he controls this presentation
is in his placement of the cut. Just as he
refuses to use (for to use is to misuse) plot or
story and so falsify his film, so he refuses to
use dialogue, to use character study. Both
serve their function but both appear to be gratuitous.
Within the a-b-a pattern of the Ozu
sequence, the cut can occur some time before
the story point is made and, also, some time
after it has been made. Most directors allow
their characters only enough time to contribute
one more link in the story-chain and will
then efficiently but also ruthlessly clip off
their film-life in the interests of such abstract
considerations as story-continuity or what is
called a tight film. By contrast Ozu's scrupulousness
is astonishing, as is his tact. Necessary
dialogue will be given but will occur only
in the center (the "b" section) of the
sequence. The 1959 Ukigusa (Floating Weed)
is filled with marvelous examples of this but
perhaps the most perfect is the very long Nohwatching
in Banshun. There is a point to be
made (silently: the daughter sees her father
nod in greeting to the woman she suspects
will become her stepmother) but it only occupies
about a half-minute of this four-minute
scene. The rest of the time we watch the
father, his pleasure, his delight in the Noh.
Both before and after the anecdotal point of
the scene, the camera stays with the father
whose supreme delight, and our delight in his,
is the real, the emotional point of the shot.
Ozu places his cut after the emotional point
and not the anecdotal point of the scene is
made-and he almost never cuts directly from
either dialogue or action. Tactfully, he waits
for his characters to fall into repose. Only in
moments of great emotion (which he must
show), weeping in Banshun and Tokyo Monogatari,
the completely atypical "romantic"
kiss in Soshun, does he cut from action, and
then out of a sense of discretion-like that
discreet moment when Antonioni's camera can
no longer bear to watch the protagonists of La
Notte and consequently turns away. Ozu refuses
to "take advantage" of his characters in
the way that most directors are only too
delighted to do. His scrupulousness is extreme
and the placing of the cut within the body of
the picture shows this. Again, like Mozart, he
knows precisely when to end.
TEMPO
Ozu's time is not clock-time, it is psychological
time, and he will give any length so long
as there is a point of character involved. But
such revelation of character need not be
direct. Ozu's films are almost as noteworthy
for what they leave out as for what they
include. His treatment of time as a continuum,
for example: in Banshun the daughter visits
her friend, then they go to another room but
the camera remains behind and its only ostensible
reason is to watch the clock (in the background)
and to listen to it strike four o'clock;
at the beginning of Akibiyori (the scene is in
a temple) the characters leave, but the camera
remains to listen for the striking of a gong
(meaning that funeral services are about to
start), then there is a cut to the temple where
we see the second stroke of the gong; in
Tokyo Monogatari just before the very touching
scene between mother and daughter-inlaw,
the camera places itself in the outside
corridor (a geographically-placing shot) and
listens to ten of the strokes of midnight, only
entering the room with the characters in time
for the final two strokes. Ozu, it will be apparent,
observes chronological time only for its
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OZU 15
psychological effect-the effect upon his characters
and upon us. In the same way he will
interrupt or punctuate clock-time. This is seen
mostly in his placing shots. In Soshun there
are five identical set-ups (the outside of the
couple's house) and each is held for at least
fifteen seconds. These perform the double
function of "placing" us geographically and, at
the same, indicating that "an amount" of time
has passed. The "actual" time of scenes which
are chronological is rarely interruptedthough
it occasionally is, as in Soshun where,
perhaps in order to induce an actual feeling of
alienation which is one of the moral points of
the scene, Ozu cuts from the middle of the
mah-jong scene out into the empty corridor
before returning us again to the (uninterrupted)
game they are playing.
There is another kind of tempo in Ozu's
films, however, and this is within the
sequence itself. The order is almost invariable
and put into musical terms it would be:
1. the placing shot, often largo
with no one in it; or, the establishing
(long) shot, with
characters in repose:
2. people; or, preliminary moderato assai
action:
3. dialogue-the "anecdotal" allegro
point:
4. the point made, the "aft- allegretto
er" talk, often humorous:
5. the return to repose and/ poco a poco
or the final and/or next larghetto
placing shot:
Just as the visual form is the binary a-b-a, so
the temporal form is slow-fast-slow. Each
sequence may follow this pattern precisely
because the sequence pattern is not the story
pattern. Though the length may vary, the balance
of the sequence is usually the same. One
of the reasons Ozu can do this is that he is not
concerned with the past-only with the present.
His characters, no less than Antonioni's,
are living in the now, and they have no history
(certainly Ozu's purposeful failure to mention
the all-important dead mother in Banshun
until the final reel is just as astonishing, and
just as right, as Antonioni's apparent lack of
curiosity as to what happened to Anna in
L'Avventura.) And when a person dies in
Ozu's world (which is often) they are merely
and instantly gone. There are no ghosts in
Ozu as there are in Resnais and Bergman.
The past barely exists in Ozu. Tokyo Monogatari
is about the natural advisability of forgetting
the dead (daughter-in-law forgets dead
husband; old man will forget dead wife) just
as much as L'Avventura is about the horror
which Claudia and Sandro feel at forgetting
Anna. The difference is that Ozu's people
accept this from the beginning and Monica
Vitti (in both L'Avventura and L'Eclisse)
must "learn" to accept-she does not know
this truth. The length of her education is the
length of the film. Too, Ozu would not be
concerned with a tableau at the end which
contrasted Sandro with a blank wall and
Claudia with a dormant, or dead, volcano.
SCENE
The reason is that Ozu has also refused himself
what has now become the most popular
way through which directors may directly comment:
the placement of people within a scene.
When Ozu photographs his people from the
back, or shows them facing opposite directions,
it does not necessarily mean a direct
comment, as it would in Bergman, in Fellini,
in Ichikawa. People kneeling side by side
mean nothing beyond the image itself-just as
those who read symbols into Ozu's work (the
dropped apple peel, the final shot of the sea
in Banshun) are on the wrong track. Direct
comment, symbolic scenes-these are alien
to a director of Ozu's sensitivity precisely because
they constitute an unfair comment on
character-unfair because they are the kind of
comment which attempts to sum up something
as complicated as a character with something
as simple as a symbol. Ozu prefers something
more subtle-the still-life. The hanging
lanterns in the later Ukigusa, the flowerarrangements
of Higanbana, the single vase in
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16
OZU
the darkened room in Banshun-what do
these mean? They are apparently still-lives,
objects, photographed for their own beautiful
sakes. This is not true, however. Take the
vase, for example. Father and daughter (soon
to part since she will get married) are going
to bed. They talk about what a nice day they
had (and Ozu very carefully refrains from
their saying that it is their last day togetheras
it is) and then the daughter asks a question
in the darkened room, lying next to her father,
and gets no answer. From here on: a shot of
the father asleep, a shot of the daughter looking
at him; a shot of the vase in the alcove,
and over it one hears the gentle sounds of the
father's snoring; a shot of the daughter, halfsmiling;
a long shot of the vase, almost ten
seconds; a shot of the daughter, her mood
entirely changed, near tears. The vase serves
the function of pivot. It means nothing in
itself (except perhaps repose, sleep); it is,
rather, a pretext, a reason for an amount of
elapsed time, an obiect, something to watch,
during which the feelings of the daughter
change. It is difficult to say why this is more
satisfying than would be the ordinary way of
doing it-our actually watching the change on
the daughter's face. Perhaps the reason is that
Ozu imposes a kind of impersonality, a kind
of coolness, between the daughter and ourselves.
Not by seeing her but by seeing what
she sees (a vase, alone, solitary, beautiful) we
can more completely, more fully comprehend
and hence feel what she herself is feeling.
Again and again in Ozu this technique occurs
(in the Noh-watching scene from the same
film, you watch a good portion of the Noh
itself-even after it is over, the next shot, a
placing shot with trees, carries under it the
music of the Noh) and we feel by objectively
sharing the object of the emotion and not by
subjectively observing this mere emotion upon
the face of the character.
This is a kind of impressionism in that Ozu
brings us both the impressions and the things
which created them, combining them in such
a way that the impression upon us is the same
as that upon the characters. This is one of the
reasons for the flavor of the Ozu film. He is
not concerned with action. He is concerned
with reaction. Ozu almost never makes a
"story" point visually; he makes it verbally, in
the dialogue. And he almost never makes a
"character point" verbally; he makes it visually.
Did the old people in Tokyo Monogatari
have a good time on their trip? They say they
did; their children say they did; everyone
appears to believe that they did-and probably
this is sincere, everyone (including themselves)
agreed to think that they did. This is
one of the points of the story. Yet, we know
the truth. We have been shown it rather than
told it, we have read it in their faces-we
know it by having seen everything they have
seen and then seen their faces. We have been
seduced into comparison-and this is the function
of the scene in Ozu's pictures.
Ozu's method, like all poetic methods, is
oblique. He does not confront emotion, he surprises
it; he restricts himself precisely in order
to achieve profundity, in order to transcend
these limitations; his formality is that of poetry,
a context which surprises and hence
destroys habit and familiarity, returning to
each word, to each image, a freshness which
was its originally. In all this Ozu is very close
to the sumi-e ink-drawing masters of Japan, to
the haiku poets, and this the Japanese somewhat
dimly understand, calling Ozu "the most
Japanese of all Japanese directors." Ozu's cinematic
syntax is as it is because he has found
through trial and error (as have all master
craftsmen) that it best creates the container,
the structure, which must best contain, must
best present, must best preserve this revelation
of human character because it is human character,
these observations which are moral
because they are true.
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