Despite all of the pops, and splotches, and jumps, the beauty of Ozu’s mise-en-scène is sufficient to allow you to lose yourself in the charming, though sometimes harsh, world he has created. The Cinémathèque screened Tokyo Story, released in 1953, with his first talkie, The Only Son (1936). In terms of narrative, the two films share much. Tokyo Story famously concerns an older couple making a lengthy train trip to Tokyo to see their adult children, a son and a daughter, together with their spouses and children. In addition, their deceased son’s wife lives in Tokyo and maintains a close relationship with them. 
Their children appear to see the visit as a burden to be endured, and their grandchildren have no interest in them. Only their widowed daughter-in-law, Noriko (played by Ozu regular Setsuko Hara), shows them any real concern and kindness. But this isn’t simply a tale of insensitive children spurning their parents. In one scene, the father, played by Chishu Ryu (another regular) is talking with two old friends in an izakaya, and under the influence of sake, admits that he is disappointed in how his children turned out. He had thought that his son, who is a doctor, had an important practice, but he is, in fact “only a neighborhood doctor.”
This theme of parental disappointment is prominent in The Only Son. Although Ozu made this film in 1936, it is in fact his first talkie, a demonstration of his commitment to the silent cinema (Ozu must be ranked among the very best silent directors). A single mother who works a difficult, health-destroying job in a factory extracting silk from cocoons makes the very difficult sacrifice to send her son to high school in the hopes that he will make something of himself. Years later, with apparently little contact with her son, she makes the journey to Tokyo to see his success, only to find that he is married, with a child, and working in a low-paying teaching job at a night school. Worse, however, is his disillusion with life. During a climactic and emotionally charged scene, she berates him for his loss of courage and drive. Soon after, her son has the chance to show his real character, when he takes what little money they have (in fact, the mother's life savings that she has given her son for his family) and gives it to a neighbor whose own son has met with a serious accident and needs expensive hospital care. She expresses pride in her son’s selfless act, and no doubt feels it; and yet the end of the film shows her hard at work at the silk factory. She takes a bucket outside to empty it in the prison-like though beautiful factory yard, sits down and cries. This is the end of the film. What is she feeling at this moment? Disappointment, pride, weariness, love, defeat—no doubt these are all part of it. Such an ambiguous ending, undercutting traditional cinematic narrative closures, seems very typical of Ozu.
Also among the early offerings was a silent film, Tokyo Chorus. In this movie, the main character is fired from his job (for sticking up for an older fellow worker). The family is plunged into financial crisis which is exacerbated when their daughter becomes ill and must be hospitalized. Eventually, the main character meets up with a former teacher who has opened up a restaurant; and after going through some humiliations to help the restaurant get launched, he is rewarded when the teacher helps to secure him a job teaching English at a girls’ school in a small town. Again, here is a conventional cinematic happy ending. But the reaction of both the main character and his wife is bittersweet. He must accept this job or face starvation, but they are both clearly depressed by having to leave Tokyo. The wife asks “we’ll be able to return someday, right?”, and this seems to be the thought that makes exile bearable. The couple’s love of Tokyo is somewhat in contrast to other films, where Tokyo is seen as a place nearly impossible to make one’s way. This is an excuse proffered by adult children to explain their failures in both Tokyo Story and The Only Son, and the parents in those films clearly see the excuse as insufficient.
Next page: The world's indifference
