Yasujiro Ozu, observations
Continuing the book review from yesterday, I thought I would list out some of the more surprising tidbits that I learned about Ozu through Donald Richie's observations. There are other studies of Ozu's works available by other people, so these are definitely going to be partially skewed toward the author's remarks, however as mentioned before he does provide many convincing examples and explanations to back things up.
Observations and Interesting notes on Ozu
- Ozu chose his actors not by their skill but by their character, meeting with them and asking about their lives and interests rather than their experience. He found that their character came through their faces better than any amount of professional acting. It is also for this reason he used the same actors over and over again -- he wrote characters with these particular actors in mind.
- He found non-actors to be more malleable and was extremely obsessive about coaching them, often repeating scenes numerous times until the actor had completed it correctly in the way Ozu had prescribed. He would choreograph words with actions of the hands (scratching one's face) or body movement and facial expression. His actors were often fed up with this, but were very grateful for his coaching at the same time and felt they had learned a lot.
- Ozu loved Citizen Kane, a completely radically different style from his own, but he found it very technically interesting.
- Ozu was very fond of drinking, and much of the writing happened while he was drinking in collaboration with his main screenwriting partner Kogo Noda.
- He wrote for characters, working them out first then working out scenes on notecards. The notecards would be shuffled around until a movie was entirely laid out.
- Certain types of scenes were generally specific to certain types of locations, with the main locations being inside the tatami room of a house, the local bar, work, and school.
- Ozu's favorite part of the filmmaking process was shooting, his least favorite was editing
- His shooting priority was for composition, and frequently he would shuffle room items around after a take in order to get the most optimal photographic shot. There are numerous continuity issues because of this. He was very sloppy about it and did not think people would notice (and most people haven't).
- His shooting style projects that of the passive Japanese individual, sitting attentively in the tatami room watching and listening. It forces one to sit still at the table and observe, and in doing so this style as it evolved eventually became to be known as one that is quintessentially Japanese. In editing, rather than the traditionally modern concept of cutting on action, Ozu forces us not only to listen until the sentence has ended, but several seconds afterwards so that we may digest and at the same time appreciate the words of this stranger who has invited us into their tatami room.
- Ozu used unimportant objects in his shooting as transition points, but in doing so assigned weight to their meaning and held these shots in the editing room for a long time, sometimes as much as 10 seconds. He was very intrigued by the clock scene from High Noon. The concept that most closely illustrates this practice is that of mu, which simply means nothingness, but within nothing there can be everything.
- His films, according to Richie, follow a very defined pattern which is true for each shot, each sequence, and the entirety of each story itself. Generally it involves a wide perspective, a middle perspective, a close-up, and then back to a wide perspective.
- Chishu Ryu has appeared in all but a couple of his movies, and is said to play the part most closest to Ozu himself.
- The Japanese expression mono no aware describes a philosophy that can be summed up as c'est la vie or "life is like that" -- a phrase that appears in a good handful of Ozu films to show the simple acceptance of his characters of what comes to pass. This phrase exemplifies his body of work as concentrating on slices of Japanese life that move on in the present timeline right along with the viewer, rather than focusing on the past or future.
- Ozu was shy with women and never married. He died of cancer late in life. His tombstone bears the symbol for mu.