The Cinematheque

“The most physically beautiful of all of Ozu’s pictures.”

Donald Richie, Ozu

Though Shochiku was Ozu’s home, he still managed to find rare opportunities to work at other studios. Floating Weeds, a colour remake of his silent picture A Story of Floating Weeds, was produced for Daiei Film and made exceptional use of its stable of talent, most notably Mizoguchi cinematographer Miyagawa Kazuo (Ugetsu) in his only collaboration with Ozu. The story, like its predecessor, concerns a travelling theatre troupe returning to a remote town to perform after several years. Its arrival sets the stage for an anxious reunion between the company’s aging lead actor (Nakamura Ganjiro) and his illegitimate adult son, who believes him to be his uncle. The film’s resplendent visual design was, in part, fueled by the director’s contrarian spirit: Ozu was allergic to the rising popularity of CinemaScope and its long take, long shot formula—“I wanted to have nothing to do with it”—so he intentionally shortened shots and increased close-ups.

In Japanese with English subtitles

“The sheer beauty of Ozu’s exquisite (and typically eccentric) compositions and the expressive use of sound tell all you need to know about the characters, their emotions, and relationships … The three lecherous thesps … suggest a more versatile, even discreetly subversive talent.”

Geoff Andrew, Time Out