Era uma Vez um Pai

Most of the films of Yasujiro Ozu take a very restricted time period: a few days at the most. "There Was a Father" is unusual in that the time span is actually quite long: it stretches over a number of years (this is also the case with "The Only Son"), as it chronicles the relationship of a widower with his son. The father, a schoolteacher (played by Chishu Ryu), struggles to make sure that his son has advantages that he never had; in this case, the son is appreciative of all that the father has done, and the relationship is one of the most heartwarming of all familial relationships in Ozu's work. "There Was a Father" represents one of the most beautiful depictions of a good parent in all of world cinema.

Slow-moving tale of a father's relation to his son. After a pupil accidentally dies on an excursion, a teacher (Chishu Ryu) retires from services and starts working second rate jobs to provide for his son's education. The movie jumps many years to show the relation of the father and son as the son has come adult. It is a film about sacrifice and duty. The two main characters must live a life apart, given that the son has so fulfill his studying duties and the father is working elsewhere. There are some heartthrob scenes with the small boy and a gentle Ozu melancholy throughout, but I find it not to have very much going for it in terms of theme display or drama compared to other Ozu I have seen, with basically just the two characters. Still, effective film-making on very simple premises. Excellent score – I thought the composer must have been Ozu regular, but was not.

Another sober wartime drama, this time a sort of reworking of THE ONLY SON as a widower schoolteacher decides to send his boy to a boarding school to give him the best education possible and seek a higher paying position to afford tuition. The film takes a sudden leap forward in time as the grown son desires to take care of his aging father, but the father forbids the son to compromise his own career. The war is barely mentioned but the film can easily be read as a propagandistic statement about self-sacrifice and devotion to duty, even at the cost of family unity. However, the pensive, tentative mood Ozu captures at the end, embodied in the son's distant, troubled look as he thinks about his father, hints at Ozu's own reservations with the moral message being issued. The scenes of father and son together in both halves of the story have a gentle perfection that gives the film all the beauty it requires, thanks to great performances by Shuji Sano as the grown son and Chishyu Ryo as the father. Amazingly, Ryu was only 38 when he gave this totally believable performance as an aging patriarch -- in fact he barely looks any different than he does in AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON twenty years later!

Lesser, but, of course, still fine Ozu. It might come off as better if it had not been edited by American censors after the war, or if the existing print were a little less damaged (it's easily the worst print I've ever seen Criterion put on DVD, and they apologize profusely in the booklet for it; of course, it's of the best quality that is available). Chishu Ryu, in his first starring role, plays the titular father. The film opens with him quitting his job as a teacher after a student under his supervision has died. A widower, he moves away from the city with his young son in tow. After he finds a good school, he abandons his son to move back to Tokyo, where he can find better work. The meat of the film is the torn relationship. The son isn't bitter, exactly - more hurt that his father is far away. When he grows up, he wants to quit his job as a teacher to move to Tokyo to be with his father, but his father refuses the idea. Every person must do their job the best they can. While the message of every citizen doing their duty is a part of the film's wartime propaganda, it doesn't really come off as such. It feels more like Ryu is always punishing himself for his own career failures, or maybe that he fears that his son will be a failure like himself if he quits his job. Yet Ryu's character never comes off as cold - he loves his son, and his son loves the heck out of him. It's as if the forced separation is pathological. All the scenes between the father and son are golden. I did think that whenever the film strayed from them it wasn't as strong, and the pacing feels a little weird at times (almost certainly from the editing the film suffered later on). The final moments are killer.

Directed by Yasujirô Ozu Written by Yasujirô Ozu Takao Yanai & Tadao Ikeda Starring: Chishû Ryû, Shûji Sano, Takeshi Sakamoto, Haruhiko Tsuda & Mitsuko Mito

Japanese culture has always been in my interest, and watching old Japanese movies has been a thing I have done for some time now. I started of course with some of Akita Kurosawa's classic samurai-films from the 50's and 60's., in which I mostly enjoyed. Some time ago I stumbled onto director Yasujirô Ozu. I only knew him for his 1954 film, "Tokyo Story". I did some research and found a copy of "There Was a Father" (Original Title "Chchi Ariki"), and watched it a Sunday evening. I could not make up my mind if i thought this movie was some total garbage, or if it was a pure masterpiece / it's either. But one thing is for sure, it stayed on my mind for hours. I came to the conclusion, that I actually really enjoyed it. The film centers around a father, played by Chishû Ryû, and his son, played by Haruhiko Tsuda (and Shûji Sano), and focues on their relationship in a 25-year timetable. There are a few issues with the pace of the film. I'm sure many viewers will consider it boring, because most of the film is just them having a conversation about life and other subjects of matter which all end up being boring. But if you really give it the time to tell the story, it is actually kind of exiting and intriguing to watch and listen to. The film just seems more natural because of the every-day life conversations which they're having. Of course the movie dates back to the middle of WWII, in which Japan was a big part of, but this innocent picture, hides it away for a while, and just pays attention on some of the things that goes on in the familys. On a techinal level, the film is very beautiful shot. Cinematographer, Yûharu Atsuta and director, Yasujirô Ozu takes some wise decisions by having the camera just observe what's happening in the film. It fits the tone very well, and give the viewer time to think about the things the characters disguss in the film. Though, the sound in the film wasn't quiet as good as they are now-days, mostly because this is a more than 70-year old movie. However, it didn't ruin the film. It was easy to ignore.

Though, I would have found the film a bit not my type of film, I really enjoyed watching it. It felt real. It felt like i was there, back in the twentieth century just making observations of the lives of a father and his son. I look very much forward to see more of Yasujirô Ozu work. I am very impressed by this man, even though it's the first film of his I've seen.

I give "There was a Father" 3.5 / 5 stars