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Cinema Ozu (25): The Last of the Lost

Feature #33:
College is a Nice Place / Daigaku yoitoko
(1936)
Status: believed to be completely lost
Script: fully preserved
Region1 DVD: N/A

Ozu's return to college finds it a more hollow, bitter, and ironic place. Students as always struggle in the face of exams and employment, but gag-filled escapades are all long-gone. Higher education is a hindrance rather than a gateway to success in recession-ridden Japan. Unemployment is the norm, rather than the fate of the lazy. Bordwell's description of this Chishu Ryu-starring film believed completely lost is sobering indeed. It also drives home how tragic a loss among tragic losses this final "missing" Ozu film is.

To miss the starting point of the major actor-director collaboration that was the Ryu/Ozu run of films is one thing. It's entirely another to have lost a great director's final silent film. On top of that, this is one that returns to a genre he had employed regularly and at once turns it on its ear, reflecting the reality of Japanese life at the time. As far as I'm concerned, it employs the most blunt social commentary seen to this point in Ozu, based on what Bordwell describes.

In particular, one sequence begins with a tracking shot in a mostly-empty lecture hall and cross-cuts to short vignettes of students selling trinkets in the street, and otherwise goofing off and drifting through their glory days. The lecturer giving a class on "The Poverty of Education"? None other than Tatsuo Saito, in a cameo. Kihachi-no-longer Takeshi Sakamoto appears briefly as a teacher.

Chishu Ryu plays Amano, one of the two leads, who are buddies struggling through school and concurrent military drills. Amano eventually gives up on school and intends to move back home to the country. His pal Fujiki (Toshiaki Konoe) steals from his wife's savings to pay for a big farewell party. When Amano leaves the party in tears, Fujiki cries "Will we ever become anything?". His wife gives him a "get a hold of yourself"-style reprimand, after which everyone makes do as best they can, returning to their routines.

Few regular Ozu actors were in this film aside from the aforementioned Sakamoto, Saito, Ryu, and Choko Iida, who plays a boarding house owner's wife. Sanae Takasugi, who plays Fujiki's wife Chiyoko, would appear in The Munekata Sisters for Ozu fifteen years later, and Boarding House Owner Kiyoshi Seino shows up in a couple of other Ozu pictures in bit parts.

The message of perseverance through times of trouble is profound here, and Ozu's intended takeaway appears to be "keep moving or risk sinking". He would later reflect that it was decidedly "not a cheerful look at college days".

We've finally exhausted the list of Ozu films believed lost (mostly due to WWII bombings of Tokyo). I love writing this series, but I have dreaded each Lost Film entry. Up next is half of the reason the series was started, the magnificent The Only Son. Back later this afternoon with that one, which will be an individual entry in the series as well as part of a separate review of the Two by Ozu set itself.

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.