A Story of Floating Weeds

I was able to see The Story of Floating Weeds for the first time recently, thanks to the Criterion Collection's DVD.

I was led to it when I came across Roger Ebert's list of his ten favorite films (written some time ago).

In his notes, Ebert claims Ozu shows us a "different cinematic language" but I find that kind of talk so much blather. Ozu uses his shots effectively to allow the actors to communicate the emotions being portrayed, especially necessary in this silent film.

A third rate company of traveling actors returns to a town after four years. The leader of the troupe had abandoned his lady in this town years before in order to tour with his company. He has fathered a son by the woman, whom he visits whenever he can, but his paternity is kept secret from his son.

What follows is the exposure of the secret and the effect it has on the lives of everyone involved, and some innocent bystanders as well.

The camera is almost always objective, the acting style is somewhat less melodramatic than in American silent films. There are excellent performances by all.

No time period is given for the story, but I have to assume it is earlier than the year the film was made (1934) because there are no automobiles, no radios, no telephones.

The enjoyment of Floating Weeds lies in the story itself and the ability of the director to tell it compellingly. If you demand car chases or food fights, this is not for you.

The Criterion DVD allows you to watch with or without the specially commissioned score. For first viewing, I recommend without.

Early silent film from acclaimed Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, "A Story of Floating Weeds" is an ostensibly simple tale of the head of an itinerant troupe of Kabuki players reconnecting with his teenage son Shinkichi (Koji Mitsui). The boy, who had been told that his father was a civil servant who had died, is a student 'with prospects' and the father does not want him to know of his humble origins. As he says to one of the female players in his troupe "My son belongs to a better world than yours", which of course, is the same world as his. Although the focus of the story is on the 'master' and his secret family, there are a number of entertaining scenes featuring the troupe as they are stuck in the town with their performances rained out, broke and bored, which much of the gentle humour coming at the expense of Tomi-boh (Tomio Aoki), the little boy with the errant bladder who plays a dog in the troupe's show. I watched an English-subtitled Criterion Edition on TCM and my only criticism is that the piano score seemed (IMO) too 'Western' for the setting (but I have no idea what the original music was like). The film is a slow-moving but poignant and beautifully filmed taste of pre-WW2 Japanese life. Later audiences would have found Shinkichi's mother's statement that he'll soon be old enough for the draft much more foreboding than Ozu could have intended. Remade by the same director as "Floating Weeds" in 1959.

Warning: Some plot points are revealed in this review

One of the last silent films by Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu (later remade by Ozu himself in in color in 1959) is about a traveling kabuki troupe arriving to a small town in Japan. The troupe's leader, Kihachi (Takeshi Sakamoto) uses the occasion to meet his old lover and their grown son (who believes Kihachi is his uncle), but his current lover Otaka (pretty, ethereal Rieko Yagumo) does not appreciate this when she learns about it, so she convinces a fellow actress of the troupe to seduce Kihachi's son. Kihachi, obviously, doesn't react well either when he learns about this. Reportedly, Ozu based this film on an American film from 1928 called "The Barker".

There are few differences from the 1959 remake. For instance, here the kabuki troupe arrives to a mountain town in a train, instead of arriving to a coastal village by boat. Secondary characters are less shown. But mostly, both films are very similar, almost scene by scene, including the famous part where they are shouting over each other across a rainy street or the finale with Kihachi and his now reconciled lover drinking sake in the night train. The actor playing Kihachi, though, is about two decades younger than Ganjiro Nakamuro in the 1959 version.

Overall, this movie is not, in my opinion, as accomplished as the remake, but is still very well worth seeing, and one of the highlights of Ozu's silent films.

Remakably similar in structure yet different in tonal effect to Ozu's more famous 1959 remake, this story of a travelling troupe's last days in a seaside village was one of Ozu's first forays into a quiet, rural background, though it still feels brisk compared to the more staid and sumptuous remake. The depictions of stage life are more slapstick-oriented than in the remake (most notably in Tokkan Kozo's hilarious turn in a full-sized dog costume), but are counterbalanced by sensitive portrayals of all the characters, especially the great, dignified lead performance by Takeshi Sakamoto. The romantic interludes are as powerful as in the remake, though without employing the overt sensuality of on-screen kissing; instead there appears to be the use of a filter or gauze to give the scenes between the young couple an otherworldly effect, which gives more emphasis of the idea of the actress employed to seduce the troupe leader's son enacting a "performance", an idea that I would have like to have seen developed even further. Even so, this is a marvellous work with a set of wonders distinguishable from that of the remake.

"A Story of Floating Weeds" (1934) was the second Yasujiro Ozu's film I've seen. Like with "Tokyo Story", I kept asking myself, why the film that was made so many years ago about the people who lived so far away in the world I don't know much about is so wonderfully engaging? Why was I so drawn to the characters of this human drama? The story is simple: an aging, traveling actor who is the manager of a kabuki troupe returns to a remote village where he secretly meets his former lover and her 19 year old illegitimate son, to whom he is known as "uncle." The older man finds happiness in communicating with his son who turned to be a fine young man. His current mistress, filled with jealousy because of his attachment to his secret family, hires a young beautiful girl, the member of a troupe to seduce a boy.

Directed by the great director and humanist with elegant simplicity, genuine interest to his characters and restraint, this moving film is never melodramatic or manipulative.

I liked the music score written specially for the film in 2004. I tried to watch it silent but it would take me more than one viewing to get used to no music score at all.

Seems that Ozu valued the film and thought about it a lot - he himself made a remake in color and sound 25 years later.