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Cinema Ozu (4): Days of Youth

This shot taken from the low-quality DVD available from YesAsia. If you want Days of Youth, hope that Criterion eventually puts it out, because this edition looks terrible. Lousy compression, the whole nine yards.

8: Days of Youth / Gakusei romance: Wakaki hi (1929)
Status: Available on DVD in Japan
Script: full script preserved
Prints: original negative and multiple prints survive

Ozu's earliest surviving film is a college comedy wherein a couple of pals pursuing the same girl. One of them offers to sublet his room to her, but leaves all of his stuff behind so that he has to keep dropping by unannounced. The other clumsily stalks her (a tradition still endorsed in many movies) and bungles his way through an awkward chat over tea. Neither is aware of the other's pursuit until well into the runtime.

The love triangle dissolves when they unexpectedly run into the girl at a ski retreat. She's there for a formal meeting leading to an arranged marriage, which we also discover before they do. They return home disappointed about the girl only to find out that they're flunking. The subletting schemer assures the other pal that he'll snag his pal a new girl.

The movie stands in stark contrast to the films and style for which Ozu is best-known. For one, the camera moves a great deal, with pans, tracking shots, and even some handheld throughout. The movie really has more in common with AMerican comedies of the time rather than other Japanese film. Hollywood references are also thick, both in production design (posters and so on) and characterization (one of the college guys is outfitted with Harold Lloyd-style glasses). In general, the audience's foreknowledge of events and conflicts is a very "Hollywood" thing not common during this era of Japanese cinema.

The skiing portion of the movie includes more minutes outdoors than I remember from the many later Ozu films I've seen combined. The "comedy" doesn't really make you guffaw 80 years later, but little of that genre from this era does. I will admit that the chuckles do pick up once you get to the slopes. The movie is something of a three-blend cheese that's perfectly satisfactory, but more interesting in contrast to stuff that's aged better.

As nice as it would be to have all of his films survive, it's rather poetic that this is the earliest one that does. The young studio filmmaker on display here is unmistakably the one who evolved into the fully-sculpted artist revered today. We see him make do with a cheap ski lodge set with which he composes a predecessor to his visually complex adjacent spaces found in later films. He would eschew eye line matches and 180 degree rules, but you can tell this is the same guy.

There's poetic symmetry throughout this otherwise cheap throwaway concept, and that structure is what's most fascinating about this early film. As seen in other early Ozu comedies, the beginning and end echo one another very intentionally. Even in a genre that traffics in accidents, none of Ozu's framing indicates carelessness in the least. Here's hoping Criterion manages to bring a decent edition to US shores at some point.

Seven minutes of Days of Youth's skiing segment can be glimpsed on YouTube:

Chishu Ryu, who would appear in more of Ozu's films than any other actor, has a bit part as an unnamed "Student" in Days. Ryu previously worked with Ozu on the lost The Dreams of Youth, A Couple on the Move, and Body Beautiful. He would next appear in the director's That Night's Wife and I Flunked, But.... We'll look at the "Mifune" to Ozu's "Kurosawa" in greater depth later in the series.

Up next is Fighting Friends: Japanese Style, a movie with similarly "feuding" buddies. Only 14 minutes of it survive.

Cinema Ozu is a limited-run series of articles about the career and impact of Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. My primary intent is to chronicle my own journey through his films, a fair number of which I have seen, but even more of which I have not. The most essential research tools I have used are David Bordwell's book Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema and definitive Ozu fansite "Ozu-san".

The series is also timed to celebrate the July 2010 U.S. release of The Only Son and There Was a Father as a DVD double-set by The Criterion Collection. You can find all entries in Cinema Ozu here. New to the series? It's best to start from the beginning.