Tokyo Story

1953’s Tokyo Story is based on a film its director, Yasujirô Ozu, hadn’t actually seen. But his writer, Kôgo Noda, had. And so the 1937 movie Make Way for Tomorrow was adapted into what is regularly described as one of the best movies ever made – 2012’s Directors Poll by Sight and Sound magazine put Tokyo Story in the number one slot. Both are punishing weepies, both “could make a stone cry” (as Orson Welles said about Make Way for Tomorrow), but Ozu’s film is also an exercise in an equally punishing minimalism. There are no movements from Ozu’s static camera. Actually, there is one, and that’s quite telling. On top of that … Read more