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Cinema Ozu (5b): Salvaged I Graduated, But...

I decided to bundle a stretch of three mostly-lost and one completely lost film under one "number" in the series, though in separate sub-posts.

Ozu's love of Harold Lloyd is prominently displayed in the couple's apartment.

10: I Graduated, But... / Daigaku wa detakeredo (1929)
Status: 10 minutes of footage in a Japanese multi-DVD Ozu boxset (and 8 of it currently on YouTube)
Script: full script preserved
Prints: 10 minutes of assorted scenes remain out of seven reels

The first of three films suffixed by "But...", Ozu returns to the theme of marital strife, but this time with a more contemplative, emotional grounding than in the comedies he'd previously done. Bordwell notes that the synopsis of the film indicate this to be Ozu reworking Dreams of Youth in a somewhat more realistic context, starting the story just as a couple is going to begin their life together.

The title comes from a commonly-used expression from the late 20's in Japan, where there were more college graduates than jobs in which to put them. This is a subject many could relate to in today's United States, even going back to the years pre-recession.

Only 10 minutes of this film are still around, 8 of which are embedded below. The YouTube uploader removed the title cards to fit within YouTube's time constraints. There's a fair amount of connecting of dots and gaps to fill in for the viewer, with abrupt jumps in the middle of shots. Regardless, the "salvaged footage" version of Graduated is easier to follow than that of Fighting Friends.

The story concerns a young man named Minoru (Tetsuo Nomoto), who graduates college and takes his first interview with a company. They offer him a position as a receptionist. He balks, insisting that the job is beneath him, and he leaves in a huff. He returns home to find that his fiancee and mother have paid him a surprise visit. Rather than let on that he's jobless and without prospects, he lies and tells them that things are great and that he got a good job. He then proceeds to pretend that he has a wonderful job, not unlike an episode of The Simpsons that comes to mind.

His mother is proud that he seems to have become successful, and the couple marry thanks to the promise of his financial stability. Once mom leaves, Minoru drops the bad news on his now-wife by pointing to a headline in the paper about people out of work, admitting that applies to him as well (and that he never had the job in the first place). She understandably gets furious with him. They bicker about money, and she gets terribly depressed about having promised the rest of her life to a dishonest fool. She then secretly gets a job to support them, since her husband won't "lower" himself to common work.

Minoru finds out that his wife has dared to work in a bar...behind his back!

Minoru goes to a bar with one of his friends to find his wife there working as a hostess. He watches her from across the room and becomes embarrassed (though he discovers he is really guilt-ridden) as she lights a cigarette for a stranger. That night, he confronts her and reprimands her for taking such a seedy job and for hiding it from him. Through the course of the argument, he peels away his machismo and realizes the extent of her sacrifice for them. He confesses his laziness and misplaced pride through tears.

He heads back to the company he interviewed with previously and backpedals into accepting the "lowly" receptionist job. In a ripped-from-Hollywood twist, the boss tells him that they were testing his character and decide to give him a full salaried position. The couple live happily ever-moneyed after.

Ozu's train imagery at work once again.

According to Bordwell, the papers sharply criticized the picture for having an 'unrealistically happy ending', citing the 60%+ unemployment rate for college graduates at the time. The situation to them was roughly similar to Confessions of a Shopaholic coming out on the heels of the recent recession. The US-style economic optimism would soon disappear here in the States, since I Graduated, But... was released 23 days before the great stock market crash of 1929.

The issue of its "Japanese realism" aside, the surviving footage and script have a lot in common with later, more refined Ozu pictures if you chop off the ending. The promise of the son's success as seen by the mother is echoed in The Only Son (1936), and the put-upon wife in Woman of Tokyo (1933).

Next, we'll look at another completely lost five-reeler with an interesting title, The Life of An Office Worker. It's the fifth out of six movies that Ozu had released in 1929, and only the second one that does not survive in any form.

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.