Tokyo Twilight [1957] [Yasujiro Ozu]

Ah, the classic opening scene, a scene that you’ll be hard pressed not to find in any Ozu films. Two men chat at a bar over a bottle of sake. Legend has it that Ozu himself and his screenwriter, Kogo Noda, would measure how much they’d written over how many bottles of sake they’d drank. But while this starts with a common, gentle scene of idle urban companionship, Tokyo Twilight soon becomes one of Ozu’s most distant, emotionally raw films, bleaker even than Early Spring, Ozu’s study of displaced post-war Japanese soldiers.

Tokyo Twilight like all Ozu films is concerned with familial relationships and the problems that inevitably follow, here dealing with a long-lost mother, the lack of a stable husband and father figure, and young pregnancy. The drama is constantly moving, there’s a feeling of being battered with all the harshness inherent in the past, present and future of this family. Lacking the subtlety in character and humour of other Ozu’s, I found this to be difficult to get through, not only because of the sheer depression found in the story, but also because of the formulistic way the plot is carried out. There’s no simple, beautiful moments of character found in other Ozu films, no counterpart to the shared cigarette of Floating Weeds, or the wonderful speech in Early Summer, where Coca Cola stacked in a fridge is related to the Western ideals of ‘perfect’ domesticity. Usually in Ozu films the drama is reserved and natural, here it felt forced, unflinching, and consequently, unrealistic.

Where the film does deserve praise is for the performances of Ozu regulars Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara. Accusations of repetitions in character can be firmly swept away, as Chishu Ryu portrays not his kindly upbeat patriarch, but a selfish, narcissistic single father intent on ignoring his daughters’ troubles while they slowly are distanced further and further away from him. Hara plays a single mother separated from her husband, and the older of the two sisters. As a single mother in 1950s’ Japan, she herself has her own set of troubles but does her best to support and serve as mother for her younger sister. Her wearied, downtrodden face starkly contrasts with her ever-present glowing smile of Late Spring and Early Summer. There is so much tragedy in this film that it’s hard to become involved in any of the characters’ lives.

The central tragedy being the shadow of failure looming over each generation, a sad heirloom passed on subconsciously, a doomed-to-repeat emotional trap. The screenplay fails because of just how tragic it all is. The versatility of human behaviour in the face of tragedy, so eloquently shown in Tokyo Story, is lacking here. Even the young generation are without joy. I’m forced to wonder if Ozu and Noda had too much (or not enough?) sake when writing this film.