The Cinematheque

“Ozu in optimistic mode, which is not to say that loss and resignation don’t figure in large part (no filmmaker has ever had a surer grasp of the melancholy of everyday things), just that here the generosity of spirit seems irresistible—and irresistibly comic.”

Tom Charity, Time Out

Bittersweet, comedic, and fable-like, Record of a Tenement Gentleman is Ozu’s first postwar picture and his final collaboration with screenwriter Ikeda Tadao. A boy found wandering the streets of bombed-out Tokyo is foisted upon Otane (Iida Choko), a cantankerous aging widow with an aversion to children. She gradually grows to love the stoic waif—lice and bed wetting notwithstanding. In master Ozu’s sure hands, this seemingly sentimental story idea is given a decidedly unsentimental and often humorous treatment. Ozu mainstay Ryu Chishu is memorable as the singing fortune teller who sets the tale in motion. The film marked Ozu’s return to studio filmmaking after being conscripted to shoot propaganda in Singapore during WWII. (What footage was shot, Ozu burned.) Its light comic touch belies a starkly contemporaneous portrait of an impoverished but humanity-clinging community trying to rebuild itself with the nation. This gorgeous new restoration premiered at Cannes Classics in 2023.

In Japanese with English subtitles

The December 12 screening will include ​“Ozu 121” opening-night remarks by The Cinematheque’s Artistic Director Shaun Inouye.

“A warm comedy of life in postwar Japan … Ozu deflects the sentimental thrust of the material by taking it all in through his passive, profoundly accepting point of view.”

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader

“A deceptively simple story in the manner typical of the most powerful of his films.”

Michael Price, Senses of Cinema