Tokyo Story

Tokyo Story

·       Introduction

Tokyo Story (東京物語 Tōkyō Monogatari) is a 1953 Japanese drama film directed by Yasujirō Ozu and prima Chishū Ryū and Chieko Higashiyama. It tells the story of associate degree aging couple United Nations agency visit Tokyo to go to their adult youngsters. The film contrasts the behavior of their youngsters, who are too busy to pay them much attention, with that of their widowed daughter-in-law, who treats them with kindness.

Ozu and screenwriter Kōgo Noda wrote the script in 103 days, loosely basing it on the 1937 American film, Make Way for Tomorrow, directed by Leo McCarey. Noda advised adapting the film, that Ozu had not however seen. Ozu used several of a similar solid and crew members that he had worked with for years. Released in Japan in 1953, it failed to instantly gain international recognition and was thought-about "too Japanese" to be marketable by Japanese film exporters. It was screened in London in 1957 where it won the inaugural Sutherland Trophy the following year, and received praise from US film critics after a 1972 screening in New York City.

·       Plot

A retired couple, Shūkichi and Tomi Hirayama (played by Chishū Ryū and Chieko Higashiyama), live in the town Onomichi in southwest Japan with their daughter Kyōko (played by Kyōko Kagawa), who is a primary-school teacher. They have five adult children, four living. The couple travel Tokyo to go to their son, girl and single in-law.

Their eldest son, Kōichi (So Yamamura), is a paediatrician, and their eldest daughter, Shige (Haruko Sugimura), runs a hairdressing salon. Kōichi and Shige are both busy, and do not have much time for their parents. Only their single relative, Noriko (Setsuko Hara), the wife of their middle son Shōji, who was missing in action and presumed dead during The Pacific War, goes out of her way to entertain them. She takes time from her busy office job to take Shūkichi and Tomi on a sightseeing tour of metropolitan Tokyo.

·       Hirayama family tree

Shūkichi (Grandfather) and Tomi (Grandmother)

Kōichi (eldest son)

Fumiko (Kōichi's wife)

Minoru (Kōichi's son)

Isamu (Kōichi's son)

Shige (eldest daughter)

Kurazō (Shige's husband)

Shōji (2nd son, deceased)

Noriko (Shōji's widow)

Keizō (youngest son)

Kyōko (youngest daughter)

·       Cast

Chishū Ryū as Shūkichi Hirayama (平山 周吉 Hirayama Shukichi)

Chieko Higashiyama as Tomi Hirayama (平山 とみ Hirayama Tomi)

Setsuko Hara as Noriko Hirayama (平山 紀子 Hirayama Noriko)

Haruko Sugimura as Shige Kaneko (金子 志げ Kaneko Shige)

So Yamamura as Kōichi Hirayama (平山 幸一 Hirayama Koichi)

Kuniko Miyake as Fumiko Hirayama (平山 文子 Hirayama Fumiko)

·       Production

Tokyo Story was galvanized by the 1937 yank film move for Tomorrow, directed by Leo McCarey. Noda ab initio advised the plot of the older film to Ozu, UN agency hadn't seen it. Noda remembered it from its initial unleash in Japan. Both films depict an elderly couple and their problems with their family and both films depict the couple travelling to visit their youngsters. variations embrace the older film going down in Depression era US with the couple's drawback being economical and Tokyo Story going down in post-war Japan, where the problems area unit a lot of cultural and emotional. the 2 films conjointly finish otherwise. David Bordwell wrote that Ozu "re-cast" the original film instead of adapting it.

The script was developed by Yasujirō Ozu and his long-time collaborator Kōgo Noda over a period of 103 days in a country inn in Chigasaki. Ozu, Noda and cinematographer Yūharu Atsuta scouted locations in Tokyo and Onomichi for one more month before shooting started. Shooting and writing the film happened from Gregorian calendar month to October 1953. Filming locations were in Tokyo (Adachi, Chūō, Taitō and Chiyoda), Onomichi, Atami and Osaka. Most of indoor scenes were shot at the Shochiku Ōfuna Studio in Kamakura, Kanagawa. Ozu used the same film crew and actors he had worked with for many years.[9][10] Actor Chishū Ryū said that Ozu was always happiest when finishing the final draft of a script which there have been ne'er any changes to the ultimate draft.

·       Release and reception

Tokyo Story was free on Nov three, 1953 in Japan. The following year Haruko Sugimura won the Mainichi Film Award for Best Supporting actor for her role because the eldest girl Shige.

It was screened at the National Film Theatre in London in 1957. It is Ozu's best known film in both the East and the West. After the success of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon at the 1951 Venice Film Festival, Japanese films began getting international distribution. However Japanese film exporters considered Ozu's work "too Japanese" and unmarketable. It was not till the Sixties that Ozu's films began to be screened in the big apple town at film festivals, museums, and theaters.

In 1958, it absolutely was awarded the primary Joan Sutherland Trophy for the foremost original and artistic film. UK critic Lindsay Anderson wrote that "It is a film about relationships, a film about time, and how it affects human beings (particularly parents and children) and how we must reconcile ourselves to its workings.

·       Critical reviews

The film holds a 100% "Fresh" rating on the review mixture web site Rotten Tomatoes, based on 41 critical reviews, with an average score of 9.7/10. John Walker, former editor of the Halliwell's Film Guides, places Tokyo Story at the highest of his revealed list of the simplest a thousand films ever created. Tokyo Story is in addition basined in film critic Derek Malcolm's The Century of Films,an inventory of films that he deems artistically or culturally necessary, and Time magazine lists it among its All-Time 100 Movies. Roger Ebert enclosed it in his series of nice movies and Paul Schrader placed it within the "Gold" section of his Film Canon.

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