“Good Morning” is an entertaining and hilarious Japanese film that is so different from director Yasujiro Ozu’s previous and later works. But I also look at the significance of the film of when it was filmed and the Japanese lifestyle that is showcased and how Western culture started to permeate in Japan in the late 50’s which is what I found so fascinating. Definitely a film worth recommending.
Another fantastic family driven silent film by Yasujiro Ozu. The 1932 film “I Was Born, But…” is an excellent film that depicts childhood bullying, family, career and relationship between parents and children. An effective story that works well for this silent film due to its talent, acting and editing.
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TITLE: Good Morning – THE CRITERION COLLECTION #84 (aka “Ohayo”)
YEAR OF FILM: 1959 (Good Morning), 1932 (I was Born, But…)
DURATION: 93 Minutes (Good Morning), 90 Minutes (I was Born, But…)
DVD INFORMATION: (Good Morning) 1080p High Definition, Color Japanese Monoraul, 1:33: Aspect Ratio (I was Born, But…) Black and White, Silent with optional score, Japanese Intertitles with Optional English Subtitles, 1:33:1 Aspect Ratio
COMPANY: THE CRITERION COLLECTION
RELEASED: May 16, 2017
Directed by Ozu Yasujiro
Screenplay by Noda Kogo and Ozu Yasujiro
Music by Mayuzumi Toshiro
Cinematography by Atsuta Yuuharu
Edited by Hamamura Yoshiyasu
Production Design by Hamada Tatsuo
“I Was Born, But…”
Directed by Ozu Yasujiro
Adaptation by Fushimi Akira
Scenario by Fushimi Akira
Music by Sosin Donald
Cinematography by Shigehara Hideo
Edited by Shigahara Hideo
Art Direction by Kimura Yoshiro, Tsunoda Takejiro
Starring:
Shitara Koji as Minoru
Shimazu Masahiko as Isamu
Sada Keiji as Heichiro Fukui
Kuga Yoshiko as Setsuko Arita
Ryu Chishu as Keitaro Hayashi
Miyake Kuniko as Tamiko
Sugimura Haruko as Kikue Haraguchi
Izumi Kyouko as Midori Maruyama
Takahashi Toyo as Shige Okubo
Sawamura Sadako as Kayoko Fukui
Tono Eijiro as tomizawa
Nagaoka Teruko as Mrs. Tomizawa
Miyoshi Eiko as Grandma Haraguchi
Tanaka Haruo as Haraguchi
Oizumi Akira as Akira Maruyama
“I Was Born, But…”
Saito Tatsuo as Chichi (father – Yoshi-san)
Yoshikawa Mitsuko as Haha (Yoshi’s Wife)
Sugawara Hideo as Ryoichi (older brother)
Aoki Tomio as Keiji (younger brother)
Sakamoto Takeshi as Juuyaku (Iwasaki, Executive)
Hayami Teruyo as Fuji (Iwasaki’s Wife)
Kato Seiichi as Kodomo (Taro)
Kofujita Shoichi as Kozou (Delivery Boy)
Nishimura Seiji as Sensei (Teacher)
Iijima Zentaro, Fujimatsu Shotaro, Hayama Masao, Sato Michio, Hayashi Kuniyasu, Nomura Akio, Ishiwatari Teruaki as The Boys in the neighborhood
Ozu’s hilarious Technicolor re-working of his silent “I Was Born, But…”, “Good Morning” (Ohayo) is the story of two young boys in suburban Tokyo who take a vow of silence after their parents refuse to buy them a television set. Shot from the perspective of the petulant brothers, Good Morning is an enchantingly satirical portrait of family life that gives rise to gags about romance, gossip and consumerism of modern Japan.
Recently, I have had this urge to watch a Yasujiro Ozu film which I have never seen before. THE CRITERION COLLECTION has been very devoted to the popular director from Japan with several releases of his films in the United States and one film that I have always wanted to watch and have never gotten to was “Ohayo” aka in the US as “Good Morning”.
Many of Ozu’s films typically feature aging and in many cases elderly father’s who fear that they are wasting their daughters lives because the daughters are dedicated to family and taking care of the parents that they have not had a chance to experience life and love for themselves.
But I heard that his 1959 film “Good Morning” was among Ozu’s most lighthearted, hilarious films about a Japanese family but very different from his previous works. And dare I say, it was probably one of the first films to use flatulence as a gag throughout the film. So, needless to say that nearly a decade after its release on DVD, I had to hunt this DVD down and watch it.
In 2017, the HD version of “Good Morning” was released and not only do we get a 4K digital restoration with an uncompressed monaural track but the Blu-ray now includes Ozu’s 1932 silent comedy “I Was Born, But…” and also special features not featured in the original DVD release.
“Good Morning” takes place in the suburban Tokyo where homes live in close proximity to each other. Some homes that capture that original Japanese traditional style of home but also combines it with a Western American style of home with the white picket fence all around.
The first half of the film features a group of young students and adults who live in a neighborhood of suburban Tokyo. The kids enjoy a joke of pressing on each other’s forehead which they then fart. The kids are supposedly eating pumice stone (or the powder of it) which enables them to be gassy but one of the kids, unfortunately is unable to producer a fart and somewhat ends up sharding in his pants.
But what the kids enjoy the most which is watching television. A lot of them hang out with this Bohemian neighbors who are seen wearing their pajamas all day or singing scat while walking through the neighborhood. But of course, the mothers of the children are not too thrilled that the kids are bypassing their studies to watch television.
Director Ozu then focuses on the adults in the film. How the wives practice gossip and how Mrs. Haraguchi, the leader of the women’s club who receives the club dues from the other housewives said that she has never received payment and now the other housewives wonder what happened to the money. When Mrs. Haraguchi of the group (who denies receiving the payment), she becomes the talk of the neighborhood as the family has bought a new washing machine, the other women wonder if their money was used for that purchas.
For Mrs. Hayashi, the treasurer of the club, she confronts Mrs. Haraguchi telling her that she gave the money to her mother. So, as the film focuses on the gossip that happens among the housewives, we then see a variety of things in Japan such as the occasional door-to-door business people trying to sell products such as rubber bands, pencils, toothbrushes, etc. (note: The business people and occasional neighbors do not knock on the doors and end up opening the doors of their neighbors and sitting in their entry way) But we start to see how these salespeople are a nuisance to home owners at that time.
As for the husbands in the film, they talk about retirement and as part of Japanese culture today, as it was back then, heading to the bar and going out for a drink before heading home.
But the film then starts to zero in on the Hayashi family. The Hayashi children: Minoru and his younger brother Isamu (the main protagonist children in the film) are bored at home and dislike how their parents tell them to avoid going to the neighbors and not watch television (mainly because they think the housewife is a cabaret singer). This starts to anger Minoru as he doesn’t understand why his family can’t just buy one. An argument takes place and when Minoru pushes his parents buttons, their father who is angered, tells them to be quiet and not say any more words.
So, in a protest to his family not buying a television, Minoru and his brother do just what their father has said… not to say anymore words and literally not talk anymore. This sets off a chain of events where the kids inability to talk or say hello to the housewives early in the morning starts to make them think that Mrs. Hayashi is angry at the housewives and have told their children not to talk to them. Meanwhile, the children who were active in school are no longer saying a word and causing their teachers and their tutors distress and making them wonder why the kids are no longer talking.
Will Minoru and Isamu’s silence work in their favor and lead to the family buying a television? Or will their silence continue to be come problematic?
As for “I Was Born, But…”, the film was Ozu’s 24th film and the first of his six films to win a Kinema Junpo Critics Prize. The film received a loosely made remake in Technicolor by Ozi for the 1959 film “Good Morning” and is regarded as his most popular silent film that continually received circulation since its release.
The film was released as part of Criterion Collection’s Eclipse Series #10 -“Silent Ozu – Three Family Comedies”. And now included on the “Good Morning” Blu-ray and DVD release.
“I Was Born, But…” focuses on a family from Azabu who has moved to a new home in the Tokyo suburbs. The Yoshi family which include the two parents – Kennosuke (played by Tatsuo Saito) and his wife (played by Mitsuko Yoshikawa), the older son Ryoichi (played by Hideo Sugawara), young son Keiji (played by Tomio Aoki) and their dog.
Life in a new neighborhood is not easy for the children as Keiji quickly learns when the neighborhood kids start picking on him. Keiji quickly goes to his brother Ryoichi and tells him how the kids stole his toy and his bread and immediately Ryoichi goes to confront the children but he is outnumbered and the worst part is one of the neighborhood kids is taller and a little older. And thus, Ryoichi loses the fight.
To make things worst is the kids keep showing up at their front yard taunting both Ryoichi and Keiji and now both fear of going to school as they worry about being bullied. So, for the first week of school, they lie to their parents and pretend they are attending school while the truth is they just sit and have fun at a nearby field. Eventually, their father finds out from their teacher that they haven’t showed up to school which angers their father. Their father continually reminds them that if they can go to school and study hard like he did, they can make something of themselves.
As time passes, eventually things get better for the boys, especially as Ryoichi and Keiji start becoming the toughest in the neighborhood but when they start getting into the discussion of who’s father is better, both brothers don’t understand why their father does everything Taro’s father tells him.
The kids realize for the first time that Taro’s father is much more powerful in status than their father and he is an executive of the company that their father works at and his father is just an employee.
For a child’s perspective, specifically for Ryoichi and Keiji, where they have always thought their father was strong and smart because he went to school and received good grades, Ryoichi can’t bare the thought that their father has a weaker professional status than Taro’s father and is disgusted by that. There is no way Ryoichi would allow Taro to be the boss of him and so, he can’t understand how his father would let Taro’s father be the boss of him.
“I Was Born, But…” continues Ozu’s well-known storylines of focusing on the Japanese family and in 1932, for a film that would seem complex to cover for a silent film, Ozu successfully pulls it off with good storytelling through actions and emotions and definitely is another wonderful film.
VIDEO:
“Good Morning” is a film presented in its original aspect ration of 1:33:1 and features a new 4K digital restoration undertaken by SHOCHIKU MediaWorX Inc. at Imagica under the supervsiion of Masashi Chikamori from the 35mm original camera negative.
This was one of the six films in which director Yasujiro Ozu used color and for the most part, I found “Good Morning” to be wonderful in the fact that we are seeing a time capsule of Japanese culture as it is becoming westernized. It has been over a decade since World War II but to see how American culture has permeated into suburban Tokyo with the white picket fences, children learning English classes, people making money through translations, a more westernized home versus the Japanese traditional home. These things were captured in this 1959 film.
For the original Criterion Collection DVD review for the film, I wrote:
As for picture quality, the film is not exactly pristine as you will see dust and film warping throughout the film but it’s not so bad where the film is unwatchable. THE CRITERION COLLECTION used a newer digital transfer but it would be interesting to see if they ever re-release this film via Blu-ray, if new technology would be able to remove the dust and scratches.
For this Blu-ray release, the scratches are not even evident this time around. SHOCHIKU did a great job in cleaning this film up and it’s the best looking version of the film I have seen to date.
AUDIO:
Audio is in presented in monaural. The monaural soundtrack was remastered from the 35mm original soundtrack negative. Dialogue and music is crystal clear through the center channel. I didn’t hear any problems with hissing during my viewing of the film.
Subtitles are in English.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
“Good Morning” features the following special features:
- David Cairns – (17:32) David Cairns explores the comedy in “Good Morning”.
- David Bordwell – (18:41) David Bordwell, author of “Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema” discusses “Good Morning”.
- “I Was Born, But…” – (90 minutes) Ozu Yasujiro’s 1932 silent comedy with a 2008 score by Donald Sosin
- A Straightforward Boy – (13:54) A fragment of Ozu’s 1929 film
EXTRAS:
“Good Morning” features six-fold insert with the essay “Structures and strictures in suburbia” by Jonathan Rosenbaum.
After watching the film, I can understand why this film was enjoyable but also how the film is almost a time capsule of a time in Japan who where American/Western culture was starting to permeate into Japanese culture. This is important to note because for the most part, one of the reasons why Ozu’s films rarely made it into the United States because many distributors looked at his films as being “too Japanese”. And I can only have wished there were some sort of recordings back then, because I would have loved to hear or read an interview in regards to Ozu’s thoughts in the making of this film.
It was also good to see that Ozu style of filmmaking in which he doesn’t use the 180 degree rule and used over-the-shoulder dialogue scenes. So, the shots used in the film feature the actors and actresses talking directly to you on screen. My young son who joined me for a short while even asked me during the film “Dad, why does it look like the people are talking to me?”. That’s a characteristic of Ozu’s style of filmmaking.
“Good Morning” was a very fun film that is simple and captures human behavior. Minoru makes the biggest point in the film where he criticizes adults for meaningless conversations. Where conversations are either good morning, good afternoon, the weather is nice today and the conversations have no substance. That was a smart thing for the child to say because we see that emptiness in the conversations of the adults.
I also found it so interesting to see the simplicity of life before television and we are seeing that moment of time before households owned a TV and the children being so enamored by it.
Minoru and Isamu are just adorable children to watch and its just the certain behaviors, especially from little Isamu that is so natural as he walks around the hallway making punching movements or jumping. Things that kids do but you just never see in a film. I thought those little details in life was fun to see in this film. And as for the children… sure, there are a good number of fart jokes in the film (which is actually not as bad as it reads in my review because its not meant to be disgusting especially compared to how flatulence sounds in today’s modern films).
“Good Morning” is an entertaining and hilarious Japanese film that is so different from director Yasujiro Ozu’s previous and later works. But I also look at the significance of the film of when it was filmed and the Japanese lifestyle that is showcased and how Western culture started to permeate in Japan in the late 50’s which is what I found so fascinating. Definitely a film worth recommending.
As for a release from THE CRITERION COLLECTION, as mentioned earlier, the company has released a good number of Ozu films throughout the years but for this release, the 2017 Blu-ray release improves from the original DVD release in every way.
Picture quality is much cleaner and looks and sounds so much better! The Blu-ray (and newer DVD) comes with Ozu’s classic 1932 silent film “I Was Born, But…” and also a fragment of his 1929 silent film “A Straightforward Boy” and more!
When it comes to Ozu’s silent films, “I Was Born, But…” is among Yasujiro Ozu’s most popular and is the earliest Ozu print in regular circulation. As mentioned earlier, Ozu successfully pulls of this film that could be seen as complex but with good pacing, storytelling and acting, are we convinced of the relationships between brothers and family as well as the fear the kids have towards the bullying neighborhood kids. And even nearly 80 years later, this storyline continues to be prevalent today as many families are no different today than how the Yoshi family are in this film.
The film was loosely remade in 1959 for Ozu’s “Good Morning” but as their are similarities, both films are quite different from each other. In “I Was Born, But…”, the children are quick to confront their father about his career situation and what makes it so stingily hurt is that the father knows that the children are right. Even if you give your all in school, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be a high level executive and there is this strong connection with the children in this film (especially since television or major technology is not in the forefront of the film). Whereas in “Good Morning”, the two sons confront their father that other kids own a television set except them and the kids go on a hunger strike to get their parents to recognize their anger. There is still a family connection but you notice that in “Good Morning”, technology has started to seep into the family culture and you see the children more drawn towards the television set away from their family. So, both films do have its similarities but also their differences especially of suburban Japan within that 27-year time span.
But what is most interesting is that for Ozu cinema fans, we know how he takes the concept of family especially between parent and children so seriously during the 1950’s and later, so to see something that happened decades earlier in silent form and see where it first started, for fans is quite a treat. Where in his later films, the dialogue is quite important to feel the pain between parents and children, even in these silent films, surprisingly the viewer can feel the sting through the children’s harsh words to their father.
Another fantastic family driven silent film by Yasujiro Ozu. The 1932 film “I Was Born, But…” is an excellent film that depicts childhood bullying, family, career and relationship between parents and children. An effective story that works well for this silent film due to its talent, acting and editing.
Overall, “Good Morning” is an entertaining and hilarious Japanese film that is so different from Ozu’s previous and later works. But I also look at the significance of the film of when it was filmed and the Japanese lifestyle that is showcased and how Western culture started to permeate in Japan in the late 50’s which is what I found so fascinating. The Blu-ray release is a wonderful release that surpasses the original Criterion Collection DVD release and is definitely a must own for Ozu Yasuiro fans.
Recommended!
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