Category: 1936

The Only Son (1936)

Yasujirō Ozu | 1hr 27min

The Tokyo that Ryōsuke inhabits is not quite the bustling metropolis that his mother O-Tsune envisioned. His neighbourhood is a desolate wasteland of processing plants and garbage incinerators, raising chimneys high up above landscapes and imposing its industrial architecture upon locals. In fact, it isn’t terribly different from his rural hometown Shinshū, where O-Tsune worked hard for many years to send him to school and where she still toils away in her old age. Yasujirō Ozu regards the prospect of elevating one’s status through education with great cynicism in The Only Son, and given that the Great Depression was ravaging Japan’s working class at the time, it isn’t hard to see why.

This is not to say that the destitute poverty Ozu’s characters live in lacks his typical aestheticism. His trademark pillow shots introduce us to Shinshū by way of oil lamps hanging in front of street views, and when we arrive at O-Tsune’s silk production factory, rows of spinning wheels whirl in smooth, geometric harmony. Humility begets selflessness in this quiet town, constantly grinding away to build a future for the younger generation in the naive hope that they will be granted greater privileges. After displaying immense talent in crafting the meditative melodrama of A Story of Floating Weeds, this tale of parental expectations and disappointments confirms Ozu cinematic genius, underscoring the social realities of 1930s Japan through the muted, disillusioning tension between generations.

A delicate obstruction of the frame using this hanging oil lamp, setting the scene for O-Tsune’s quiet village.
Rows of spinning wheels whirl in smooth, geometric harmony – O-Tsune’s livelihood is built on the ceaseless momentum of these machines.
A mother’s hopefulness and her son’s ambition feed into each other, unaware of the real world troubles which stand in the way of success.

Adding to O-Tsune’s weight of responsibility as well is her single motherhood, having been widowed shortly after Ryōsuke’s birth. Sending him to school placed a huge financial burden on her, yet thanks to advice from his elementary school teacher Ōkubo, it also seemed to guarantee him a comfortable life. When she finally visits him in Tokyo as an adult then, not only is she shocked to find that he has taken up work as a lowly night school teacher to support a wife and child, but that the once-respected Ōkubo has similarly taken a step down the social ladder and become a restaurant owner.

Ozu keeps his camera low in this shot, funnelling the classroom desks towards the front where Ryōsuke commands the students.
Continuity in Ozu’s pillow shots, following his characters through the outskirts of Tokyo and exposing its dilapidation.
Ozu loves applying visual patterns to his compositions, here mirroring his upright characters in the smokestacks lining the background, and choosing this as the setting for their cynical confrontation with reality.

As O-Tsune and Ryōsuke sit and talk in view of Tokyo’s towering smokestacks, he is the first to admit that this was not the life he was expecting for himself. The city is simply too competitive, and he feels terrible for all his mother’s sacrifices, yet she initially remains hopeful. His life is only beginning after all, and she claims her only disappointment is in his readiness to give up – though later that evening, it becomes apparent that her regret is far more deep-seated. As Ryōsuke stands wistfully at the window of his classroom, gazing at the blinking city lights, Ozu’s mellow editing interlaces the scene with O-Tsune’s reflective, downcast expression back home. A narrow doorway confines both of them to a narrow frame as they finally meet and continue their discussion, though this time they are unable to reach as convenient a resolution.

Mother and son in separate locations, yet Ozu’s editing binds them together in disappointment, alternating between these lonely shots.
An extremely narrow frame even by Ozu’s standards, trapping O-Tsune and Ryōsuke in their shared, unresolvable tension.

“I worked hard because I wanted you to succeed,” O-Tsune laments, before finally coming clean that she has sold their house and mulberry fields for his education. “You’re all I have now in the world.” Ozu’s characteristic low placement of his camera proves particularly powerful here, levelling with them as their resilient facades drop for the first time to bare their bitterness and guilt. From the next room over, Ryōsuke’s wife Sugiko weeps, before O-Tsune and Ryōsuke join in. From there, Ozu sits in the lingering melancholy as it spreads through the house, cutting to their sleeping baby and an empty room. Within the stasis, Ozu imbues remnants of their sorrow, echoing pained, muffled cries while the unconscious child remains innocently unaware.

Sorrow and melancholy echoes through the house in these pillow shots, with each subsequent shot moving further away from its source, until we find ourselves beginning the next day.
From folded to hanging laundry – Ozu finds a logical progression between shots, establishing the relaxed flow of time within and around his narrative.

In moments such as these, the precision of Ozu’s pacing and composition become piercingly clear, as his montage seamlessly transitions to the next morning through shots of folded and hanging laundry. His characters may be wounded, yet life goes on, leaving them to pick up the pieces and keep showing the sort of love they themselves need in return. There is no long-lasting resentment on Sugiko’s behalf, as she sells her kimono to take them all out while the weather is nice, and Ryōsuke is proves his altruism as well when he instead uses this money to generously pay for his neighbour’s hospital bills. Plenty may change with the passing generations, yet the benevolence which is passed from elders to children paves the way for a redemptive union of the two. Perhaps it is good her son never became rich, O-Tsune resolves, lest he should have lost that graciousness she raised him with.

With Ryōsuke finally deciding to take one more shot at getting a licence to teach high school, it seems that O-Tsune is able to return home to Shinshū with some closure, though Ozu is not one to let his family drama subside so neatly. The enormous smile she wears back at the factory is bolstered by the pride she openly expresses in her son, and convincingly hides the sadness which emerges when she is alone. As she rests for a moment on a ledge, her forehead creases with weary dejection, revealing the impermeable regret which cannot be quelled in her old age. This factory has been her entire life, and as Ozu’s conclusive pillow shots move towards its giant, steel gate keeping her in, it is apparent that it always will be. And for what, we are left to wonder? Is one life lived in poverty worth another that is only slightly better off? Like an ellipsis at the end of a sentence, The Only Son’s final montage suspends its characters in an unshakeable discontent, striving for a prosperous, hopeful future they quietly recognise may never arrive.

A heartbreaking ending, wiping the smile from O-Tsune’s face as she pauses in solitude. Ozu’s pillow shots drift farther from this weary mother and closer to the looming factory gates that seem to imprison her, quietly casting doubt on the idealistic faith society places in a lifetime of tireless, unending work.

The Only Son is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.

A Day in the Country (1936)

Jean Renoir | 40min

Cinema history is brimming with conflicts between directors trying to maintain their artistic integrity and studios interfering with final cuts, so it is odd indeed to see a producer’s post-production meddling save a film from oblivion. For the French featurette A Day in the Country, it wasn’t until ten years after Jean Renoir cut production short due to unwelcome rain and left it in limbo that Pierre Braunberger reconstructed the existing material, thereby letting us watch it in its current form today.

If its unfinished state leaves any sort of unsavoury mark on the film, then perhaps it is visible in its rushed epilogue, briefly colliding two old lovers years after their daylong romance, before fizzling out. Still, not even this can detract from the dreamy sincerity of Renoir’s literary adaptation, especially given the friendship between his father, renowned painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Guy de Maupassant, the writer of the source material. Jean Renoir is a worthy artistic successor to both within his own medium, expanding Maupassant’s 19th century naturalism to the poetic realism of 1930s cinema, and drawing heavily on some of his father’s impressionist paintings such as ‘The Skiff’ and ‘Luncheon of the Boating Party’ to create scintillating moving portraits of rural France.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s impressionist paintings bear a significant influence on his son’s work in A Day in the Country. Clockwise from top left – ‘The Skiff’, ‘The Swing’, and ‘Luncheon of the Boating Party’.
‘The Swing’ most evidently manifests in the gorgeous swaying shot, airily detached from the earth.

Most arresting of all the similarities between A Day in the Country and the elder Renoir’s work is that scene which sees the daughter of the wealthy Dufour family, Henriette, stand on a swing and gleefully rock back and forth. The resemblance to Pierre-Auguste’s oil painting ‘The Swing’ is more than passing, positioning its young female subject as the light, romantic centre of the image, but for Jean Renoir the beauty of cinema lies as much in the camera’s elegant motions as its pictorial mise-en-scene. In his rendering of this blissful scene, we sway with her on the swing and gaze up at her joyous expression, airily detached from the earth below. True to Renoir’s penchant for deep focus staging as well, a much wider shot delicately frames this moment through an open window where two aspiring suitors watch from a distance, uniting strangers from the city and country in a single charming shot.

Renoir showcases some of the greatest early displays of deep focus during the poetic realism era, uniting strangers through the window in this delicate shot.

It is a simple story which unfolds from here, following the double courtship between Henri and Henriette on one side, and Rudolphe and Madame Dufour on the other. The film’s distinct beauty rather emerges in its relaxed pacing, nature photography, and light characterisations, positioning Henriette and her mother as two sides of a single, romantic coin. The young woman is expressive with her words and feelings, fancifully wondering whether “those little creatures feel joy and sorrow like us” as she stands at the edges of a riverbank. Later, she goes on to confess an even deeper sentimentality that resides within her soul, asking her mother whether she felt something similar when she was young.

“Did you feel an immediate tenderness for it all – for the grass, the water, the trees? A vague sort of yearning. It starts here, then it rises. It almost makes me want to cry.”

Madame Dufour’s response is sweet, yet possesses a slightly jaded edge.

“Dear child, I still feel like that, but I’m more reasonable now.”

Madame Dufour’s jaded manner is understandable given her aloof husband, setting up an escape back to her romantic youth.

In this passage, Renoir efficiently lays the formal groundwork for the switch that will soon take place between these two women. While Monsieur Dufour and Henriette’s fiancé Anatole bumble around as comic relief, Henri and Rudolphe swoop in to woo their partners, and in an idyllic pastoral setting like this who could possibly be immune to the sweet call of love? Renoir catches the rippling reflections of people, skiffs, and reeds in the silvery surface of the river, as fragile as these fleeting affairs, and he even spends time simply drifting his camera above the water, basking in the carefree atmosphere. True to his poetic realist roots, he is also sure to fill out frames with a lush, deep focus, watching one couple’s boat glide by in the background even while the other dominates our attention.

Needless to say, Madame Dufour is utterly entranced by Rudolphe’s country boy charisma, revealing the same idealism which prospers in her daughter. Henriette too is excited by Henri’s advances, though when they finally kiss Renoir cuts in close to her now doleful expression, as if she has stepped outside her mind for the first time and seen this tryst for what it is. Grey clouds begin to gather, a harsh wind whips the reeds, and as we float above the water one last time, its reflective surface is now pierced by small, sharp raindrops. Days as wistfully delicate as these can be washed away with just the slightest shift in the atmosphere.

This tremendous, melancholy close-up of Henriette presages the rain that will bring this sunny day to an end, and points to a more wistful future.

It may be fate or possibly just coincidence that brings Henri and Henriette together on the same riverbank years later, though by now she is married, and there is evidently no chance of rekindled love. Her dark eyes seemingly haven’t changed since last time we saw her, lacking the bright spark which once lit up the entire countryside. “My happiest memories are here,” Henri confesses. “I think of it every night,” she discloses in return. Although this ending is woefully truncated, there is still an affecting grace in these simple words, pensively reminiscing on a shared past. That nostalgia lasts far longer than the actual events it is born from is a painful paradox in A Day in the Country, and most of all for those whose best days are behind them. With a visual style and narrative pacing as elegant as Renoir’s though, it is fully possible to recognise the beauty of these moments as they pass us by, living from moment to moment.

A Day in the Country is currently streaming on The Criterion Channel.