Tokyo Story

Infobox Film
name = Tokyo Story

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image_size =
caption = Film poster
director = Yasujiro Ozu
producer = Takeshi Yamamoto
writer = Kôgo Noda
Yasujiro Ozu
narrator =
starring = Chishu Ryu
Chieko Higashiyama
Setsuko Hara
music = Kojun Saitô
cinematography = Yuuharu Atsuta
editing = Yoshiyasu Hamamura
distributor = Shochiku (Japan theatrical)
Criterion (Region 1 DVD)
released = 3 November, 1953 (Japan)
13 March, 1972 (USA)
runtime = 136 min.
country =
language = Japanese
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website =
amg_id = 1:50260
imdb_id = 0046438 nihongo|"Tokyo Story"|東京物語|Tokyo monogatari is a 1953 Japanese film directed by Yasujiro Ozu. It tells the story of a mother and father who travel to the bustling metropolis of Tokyo to visit their grown children, but find their children are too absorbed in their own lives to spend much time with their parents.

ynopsis

Two elderly parents Shukichi (Chishu Ryu) and Tomi Hirayama (Chieko Higashiyama) from the small seaside town of Onomichi in southwest Japan pay a visit to their busy children in Tokyo — a journey that, before the introduction of the bullet train, took almost a day. After the arduous journey, they find themselves neglected by their children. The children genuinely wish to spend time with their parents, and do to an extent, but as they have lives and families of their own they find it difficult to maintain a balance between the two. Only the couple's widowed daughter-in-law Noriko, played by Setsuko Hara, goes out of her way to entertain them.

tyle

Like all of Ozu's sound films, "Tokyo Story" is not melodramatic or structured around Hollywood plot points; its pacing is slow (or, as David Bordwell prefers to describe it, "calm"). [David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, "Film History: An Introducion", 2nd edtn (McGraw-Hill, 2003), 396.] Important events are often not shown on screen, only being revealed later through dialogue; for example, Ozu does not depict the mother and father's journey to Tokyo at all. [David Desser, 'The Space of Ambivalence' in "Film Analysis", ed. Jeffrey Geiger (Norton, 2005), 462-3.]

Ozu uses his distinctive camera style, often called “tatami-level”, in which the camera height is low and seldom moves; film critic Roger Ebert wryly notes that once in the film the camera actually pans away from a stationary view, which is "more than usual" for Ozu. [http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031109/REVIEWS08/311090301/1023 Roger Ebert's review of "Tokyo Story"] ] .

Acclaim and status

In "Sight and Sound" magazine's regular polls of directors and critics, "Tokyo Story" is regularly listed as one of the ten greatest films ever made. John Walker, editor of the "Halliwell's Film Guides", places "Tokyo Story" at the top of his published list of the best 1000 films ever made. "Tokyo Story" is also included in film critic Derek Malcolm's "The Century of Films", a list of films that Malcolm deems artistically or culturally important, and "Time Magazine" lists it among their All-Time 100 Movies. Roger Ebert includes it in his series of great movies, and Paul Schrader placed it in the "Gold" section of his Film Canon. [ [http://www.cinematical.com/2006/11/14/paul-schraders-film-canon/ Paul Schrader's Film Canon,] Film Comment - September/October 2006]

The film was recently restored and released on DVD by The Criterion Collection as a two-disc DVD set (Region 1).

References

External links

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* Peter Bradshaw, "The Guardian", June 10, 2005, [http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,4120,1503313,00.html "The quiet master"]
*" [http://artsandfaith.com/t100/2005/entry.php?film=88 Tokyo Story] " at the [http://artsandfaith.com/top100/ Arts & Faith Top100 Spiritually Significant Films] list
* [http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=217&eid=328&section=essay Criterion Collection essay by David Bordwell]
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