Powerful

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

This is remarkably gentle stuff, I felt completely exhilarated whilst watching, an intimate openness like being welcomed into someone's home on an afternoon. It helps that it's a silent, they were still making them in Japan by that time albeit usually with what was called a benshi narrating the whole, it abets the languid flow of childhood spring that permeates the whole thing. It is cleverly structured, again a gentle touch but carefully applied; two brothers new on the block have to carve their own space while fending off a gang of bullies, this is mirrored in the adult world by having their father similarly have to struggle for advancement in the working place.The extra layer is our insight into the beginnings of the Showa period; capitalist industrialization is intensified, Western styles increasingly applied over traditional mores. The adults are smartly dressed in suits, wear hats, smoke cigars. The family's house is situated on the side of railroad tracks, now and then trains come shooting off in the back of the frame, constant reminders of a modern life lunging forwards.Again this is cleverly mirrored in the weave of the film itself, the specific image of the house by the tracks recalling La Roue, a French film that had spoken very clearly to the Japanese with its transient world of circular suffering. The whole carries hues of Chaplin's bittersweet whimsy, with a mobile camera derived from Sternberg, another favorite of early Japanese filmmakers. There is no benshi narrating this, just the intertitles, another Western norm.Having just asserted power in their microcosm, the kids eventually discover that their father is a servile buffoon, a kind of court jester at the office; this revelation tearing down the facade of respectability the kids were looking up to, implicitly posits the whole working structure to be feudal, with the capitalist boss as just another kind of daimyo surrounded by fawning servants. This happens in a superb scene where everyone is gathered at the house of the boss to watch this newfangled thing called the movies. So it is the cinematic reflection that reveals truth, it was exciting to discover this moment of self-reference in a Japanese film of the time.So even though Ozu's name usually brings to mind connotations of a purity distilled from tradition, this is breezy stuff, attuned with an emerging film culture abroad, explicitly modern in view and subject matter.And knowing what we do now, there is biting commentary in the parting notion; asked what they want to do when they grow up, the two brothers very seriously assert that they want to be generals. The Japanese army had just invaded Manchuria the previous year.

I saw this film at a special screening at the Museum Of Modern Art in New York City with live piano accompaniment. I'm not sure we needed the piano, this is a really great comedy about two young brothers trying to fit in in a new place. They are faced with two things: Bullies and that they feel their father is a nobody since he works for one of the other neighborhood boy's father. The two brothers are great. The audience, which was a refreshingly large one, laughed freely through the film, as I did.This is my first Ozu film, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It depicts a child's world, what matters to them. It is a great silent film, the pace is good, it never drags. Not to be missed.

Put in simple terms, this is one of the greatest silent movies ever made. Though the film was intended to be screened with live voice-over by a benshi narrator, this masterpiece works stunningly well without sound, because Ozu'sunparalleled sense of visual rhythm, choreographed movement, and humorkeep one's eyes dancing in delight. The story concerns two boys who fight their way to gain status and respect among the local bullies, only to realize that their father is a bottom-feeder among the adults. As such it's loaded with acuteobservations of Japanese society, and not without Ozu's penchant for subtle but potent criticism. For people who are used to the "slow" Ozu of the 50s, this film will be a revelation, inspiring speculation as to how and why he changed a style that already was exceptional.

An early family drama by Ozu that starts as a coming of age-`Japanese 400 blows'- and develops into a deep essay about identity, acceptation, self-respect, honor and exemplary. Ozu has a unique style for filming rituals, and these rituals are the dynamos of Tradition. In portraying a fractured relationship between a father and his sons, Ozu reflects on the transition between an old dying order and the arrival of a new one (both kids dream of being officials in the army, some ten years before Hiroshima). This works also as a metaphor of Japan on its way to technocracy, westernization and materialism, with its small bourgeois suburbia, the ever-passing trains and even home movies and child games where kids cross themselves in the Christian fashion. There's an unforgettable traveling shot with a choreography of yawns, some recognizable `Tatami' angles, and other technical achievements that prove that Ozu mastered his craft very early on (in fact, though silent, the film looks years ahead that many contemporary Hollywood productions). A rare film and indeed a very accessible one to the complexities of the cinema of Ozu.