The Only Son movie review & film summary (1936) | Roger Ebert (2024)

Why was I thinking about flower arrangement while watching"The Only Son" the first sound film made by the Japanese master Ozu?It must have involved the meticulous and loving care he used with his familiarvisual elements. In Japan in 1984 I attended a class at the Sogetsu School,which teaches ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arranging. I learnedquickly that sorting a big bunch of flowers in a vase was not ikebana. Oneselected just a few elements and found a precise way in which they rested togetherharmoniously.

If you think that ikebana has nothing to do with film direction,think again. The Sogetsu School was then being run by Hiroshi Teshigahara, thedirector of "Woman in the Dunes," who left filmmaking to become thethird generation of his family to head of the school. after he died in 1991,his daughter became the fourth. I gathered that the Teshigaharas believed whenyou studied ikebana you studied your relationship with the material world.

Now turn to Yasujiro Ozu, who is one of the three of four bestfilmmakers in the world, and certainly the one who brings me the most serenity.I've seen 14 of his films, four of them with the shot-by-shot approach. Thatdoesn't make me an expert, but it makes me familiar with his ways of seeing. Inthe films I've seen, he has a few favorite themes, subjects and compositions,and carefully arranges and rearranges them. Some say "he makes the samefilm every time." That's like saying "all people are born with twoeyes." What matters is how you see with them.

Over an opening frame of "The Only Son" (1936), weread a quotation by the writer Akutagawa: "Life's tragedy beginswith the bond between parent and child." So do most of Ozu's films. Againand again, he focuses on parents and their children, and often on theirgrandchildren. A typical plot will involve sacrifice by a parent or a child forthe happiness of the other. It is not uncommon for both parent and child tomake sacrifices in a mistaken belief about what the other desires. The issuesinvolved are marriage, children, independence for the young, care for the old,and success in the world.

He tells these stories within a visual frame so distinctive thatI believe you can identify any Ozu film after seeing a shot or two, sometimeseven from a still. How he came upon his approach I don't know, but you see itfully mature even in his silent films. For Ozu, all depends on the compositionof the shot. He almost never moves his camera. He usually shoots from the eyelevel of a person seated on a tatami mat. He often begins shots beforecharacters enter, and holds them after they leave. He separates importantscenes with "pillow shots" of exterior architectural or landscapedetails. He uses evocative music, never too loud. I have never seen him useviolence. When violence occurs, people commit it within themselves.

Parents and children, then families, are his chosen subjects. Hetells each story with his familiar visual strategy, which is pure andsimplified, never calling attention to itself. His straight-on shots are oftenframed on sides and back, and with foreground objects. His exteriors and groupsof two or more characters are usually at oblique angles. Is this monotonous?Never, because within his rules he finds infinite variation. A modern chasescene is much more monotonous, because it gives you nothing to think about.

In "The Only Son," there is a remarkable moment whenwe have a great deal of time to think. The story is about the son of a widowedmother who works in a provincial silk spinning mill. This is hard andspirit-crushing work, but she does it to put her son through high school andset him on his road in life. After graduating, he follows an admired teacher toseek his future in Tokyo. Four years pass. His mother comes to visit him,unannounced. They are happy to see one another, they love one another, but hehas a surprise: He has a wife and an infant child. Why didn't he tell her? Wegather he didn't want to create an occasion for her to visit Tokyo and findthat he is very poor, has a low-paying job, teaching geometry in a nightschool, and that he lives in a desolate district in view of the smokestacks ofthe Tokyo garbage incinerators.

The rest of the plot you can discover. It leads to aconversation in which he shares his discouragement, and tells her she may havewasted her sacrifice. She encourages him to persevere. He thinks he's had a badroll of the dice. There is no place for him in Tokyo. Simple mill worker thatshe is, what can she reply to this? She sits up late, sleepless. He awakens, andthey talk some more. She weeps. In a reframed shot, his wife weeps. Then Ozuprovides a shot of an unremarkable corner of the room. Nothing much there. Ababy bottle. A reproduction of a painting. Nothing. He holds this shot. Andholds it. And holds it. I feel he could not look at them any longer, and had tolook away, thinking about what has happened. Finally there is an exteriorpillow shot of the morning.

If Ozu returns to characteristic visuals, he also returns tofamiliar actors. In "An Only Son," the small but important role ofthe hero's teacher is played by Chishu Ryu -- the teacher who, after moving toTokyo, fails to realize his own dreams and, as the son bitterly tells hismother, is "reduced to frying pork cutlets." This was Ryu's seventhfilm for Ozu. In all he was to appear in 52 of Ozu's 54 films, between 1929 and1962. He is the old father in "Tokyo Story" (1953).

Ryu is an actor who we recognize from body language. He exudesrestraint, courtesy. He smokes meditatively. He said Ozu directed him as littleas possible: "He had made up the complete picture in his head before hewent on the set, so that all we actors had to do was to follow his directions,from the way we lifted and dropped our arms to the way we blinked oureyes."

Ryu is the ideal actor for Ozu, because he never seems to betrying. He is the canvas. By not "acting," he invites us to lookinside him, and find a world there. I care deeply for his characters andremembering them, each looking similar, each distinctive. Acting like hisdoesn't win prizes like the Oscar; Brando drove that kind of acting out ofHollywood, rarely to return.

I really do feel as if Ozu is looking at his films along withme. He isn't throwing them up on the screen for me to see by myself. Togetherwe look at people trying to please, and often failing, and sometimes redeeming.What finally gives the mother hope in this film would sound sentimental if Idescribed it, but it's very serious.

A reminder that we're watching along with Ozu is his little teapot. In every film of his I've seen, a small tea pot appears here or there inmost of the interior scenes. It has a way of moving around, not that you'dnotice that. A little unremarkable tea pot. In his first color film, wediscovered it was red. Of course it was. On a Japanese scroll, red is the colorof the artist's mark.

Ozu's "An Only Son" and "There Was aFather" (1942) will be released Tuesday, July 14, as a two-disc set in theCriterion Collection. Both include interviews with David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson.Also reviewed in my Great Movies series: "Tokyo Story,""Floating Weeds" and "Late Spring."