Yasujirō Ozu and Akira Kurosawa are two of the most celebrated filmmakers in Japanese cinema history, but their styles, themes, and approaches to cinema are notably different. Welcome to a comparison of their lives, works, and themes they explore.
Two giants in the realm of Japanese cinema, Yasujirō Ozu and Akira Kurosawa have left legacies that continue to influence filmmakers around the globe. Their works, although rooted in the same cultural milieu, differ dramatically in thematic depth, stylistic choices, and overall impact.
Lives:
- Ozu: Born in Tokyo in , Ozu&#;s early life was marked by shifts between urban and rural settings, an experience that would later shape his deep understanding of family dynamics and societal transitions in Japan. He began his journey in cinema as an assistant cameraman, gradually finding his voice as a director. Although his career spanned both the silent era and World War II, Ozu&#;s personal life remained relatively private and unaffected by Japan&#;s turbulent history.
- Kurosawa: Born in , also in Tokyo, Kurosawa hailed from a samurai family. The rich blend of Japanese tradition and Western culture in his upbringing became evident in h
Kurosawa and Ozu
Thanks, Ugetsu! It&#;s a nice video and I love that quote!
I took the liberty to fix the typo in the link. By the way, if you paste just the URL of a YouTube video into a post, the system these days should automatically convert it into an embedded video. The same should work also for Twitter and Instagram posts. Not that I have ever mentioned this anywhere on the website. The embedding also doesn&#;t work in the comment preview feature. So this is some very arcane knowledge indeed.
Anyway, back to the video and the familiar subject matter that it touches. While I like the video, I wonder if the topic is really properly served by contrasting just two films from the two directors&#; extensive filmographies. Very different conclusions could be drawn if one concentrated on, say, Rhapsody in August and I Was Born, But&#;.
Likewise, I wonder whether we wouldn&#;t have a very similar discussion going on if we as foreign film students only really knew two American directors, say Orson Welles and John Ford for instance. I could easily imagine that we would argue that John Ford is the quintessential American director while Welles is the international, almost un-Am
Welcome to the inaugural season of Face/Off! This season, we&#;re pitting two directors with similar backgrounds against one another and letting YOU, the commenters, decide on who reigns supreme!
You have to decide which director is better than the other? Various factors could play into your decision from who takes the biggest risks to who has the more distinctive style. Remember, it isn’t so much about which director has made the most money at the box office or won the most awards, but, in your mind, which director simply makes better films.
Let&#;s analyze the filmography of today&#;s challengers.
Akira Kurosawa
s Directorial Features:Sanshiro Sugata (), The Most Beautiful (), Sanshiro Sugata Part II (), The Men Who Tread on the Tiger&#;s Tail (), No Regrets for Our Youth (), One Wonderful Sunday (), Drunken Angel (), The Quiet Duel (), Stray Dog ()
s Directorial Features: Scandal (), Rashomon (), The Idiot (), Ikiru (), Seven Samurai (), I Live in Fear (), Throne of Blood (), The Lower Depths (), The Hidden Fortress ()
s to s Directorial Features: The Bad Sleep Well (), Yojimbo (), Sanjuro (), High and Low
When we think of Japanese cinema, Yasujiro Ozu usually isn’t the first name that comes to mind. In the West, his films have never been as widely distributed as Akira Kurosawa’s or Hayao Miyazaki’s. And if you actually have heard of Ozu, it’s likely because people have described his films as “slow” or “boring” (to quote some of the negative IMDb reviews for his Tokyo Story).
In reality, however, Ozu deserves much more exposure than he’s gotten. His films are not only thoughtful meditations on modern Japan, but they also subvert the stylistic conventions of mainstream filmmaking. Despite their apparently simplistic appearance, moreover, his films are often so open-ended that critics and scholars still can’t agree on how to interpret them.
This guide will give an overview of Ozu’s life, his films’ reception, and some of their defining features. It’ll also suggest a good order to watch his films in, as well as some books you can read to learn more about him. Hopefully, you’ll come to see why Roger Ebertsaid that “To love movies without loving Ozu is an impossibility.”
Ozu’s Biography
To start with the basics: Yasujiro Ozu was born in in Tokyo. He began m
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