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Cinema Ozu (7a): I Flunked, But...

15: I Flunked, But... / Rakudai wa shitakeredo (1930)
Status: survives, but not on home video
Script: full script preserved
Prints: original negative and multiple prints survive

This is my great failure so far. I've managed to track down every other surviving piece by Ozu, and outside a surprise retrospective screening somewhere. I'm out of luck until someone puts it on DVD. The thing I like most about the synopsis I read in Bordwell's book is that the story concerns how failure in one sense leads to the protagonist's great success in life. I have two months, we'll see what I can make happen, hence the "7a". That Night's Wife is up later this evening.

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.