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The Only Son

The Only Son (1936)

September. 15,1936
|
7.7
| Drama

A silk factory worker is persuaded to support her son's education up to a college level despite their poverty. Many years later, she travels to Tokyo to visit her son.

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Karry
1936/09/15

Best movie of this year hands down!

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VeteranLight
1936/09/16

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

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Chirphymium
1936/09/17

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

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Geraldine
1936/09/18

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

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kurosawakira
1936/09/19

This is Ozu's first sound film, but could you really tell if you didn't know? The minutiae of the soundscape are so masterly affixed to what we see. Indeed, this could've been filmed in the fifties and I wouldn't have had any idea if it weren't for the rather dismal quality of the available film elements (this is available on the Blu-ray/DVD edition of Late Spring from the BFI).There's a single scene where the camera moves, and it's so understated, lasting only a few seconds, that you wouldn't perhaps even notice it's there. It's natural, subdued. Whatever antonym to "obtrusive" you may come up with likely describes it. But that's what Ozu is all about: things happen below the surface reticently, on all levels — characters' complex emotions have to be decoded from their smiles; the visual intricacies aren't revealed in the movement of the camera, instead it's the positioning of the thing that makes us go there, into that space, and notice things.I saw Vigo's whole oeuvre again with a friend a few days ago, the four films during one evening. Especially "L'Atalante" (1934) struck me again as the most amazing film: hardly anything happens, and what happens is almost trivialized in comparison to the mood of the thing, the visual atmosphere that has been set up, and how the camera moves in that environment. Ozu is so similar, albeit setting up his eye radically differently. No matter that the camera hardly moves, it's the same kind of strong visual thinking throughout. Ozu doesn't have similar paroxysms of emotion, but the poetry is there in how nothing seems to happen while everything is happening.

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MartinHafer
1936/09/20

This is another interesting film from the Japanese director Yasujirô Ozu. While he was extremely masterful at telling stories about ordinary people--often in a conflict between the modern and traditional worlds. Many consider him to be an extraordinary genius, though I also felt that perhaps he was locked into an inflexible pattern that persisted through his film. The Ozu style meant a camera that did not budge and was usually set near floor level. This means that when the characters moved, the camera cut to a new frame--it did not follow them. And, the stories, though marvelous, were very, very similar. In fact, I would say that Ozu's films are the most consistent in theme and style of any director I can think of--and I've reviewed a ton of films. Because of this, the movies often tend to blend together in your mind. In light of all this, I liked "The Only Son" because it was a bit different. While its style and camera-work were pure Ozu, the story was a bit different. Most of his stories seemed to either be about the elderly and alienation or about marriage, this one is a bit different--though it's still a very personal story of ordinary folks.The film begins in rural Japan. A young boy desperately wants to continue his education beyond primary school, but his mother is a poor widow. Yet, she is determined to work her butt off and send him to a good school in Tokyo--thereby guarateeing him a great future.Years pass. The boy is now a man with a wife and baby. He is a school teacher and is quite embarrassed when his mother comes to the big city to see him after many years. Why is he embarrassed? He thinks that his job as a teacher is lowly and he should have achieved more with his life. Whether or not his mother agrees with this is never 100% certain--but what eventually does become certain is that she does not respect him because he sees himself as a failure and is too accepting of this. What happens next provides a nice look into what it really means to be a success.Overall, an exceptionally good Ozu film. It's a bit different in tone than his later films of the 50s and early 60s and makes for nice viewing--even if you feel you've seen too many similar Ozu films. Well worth seeing--with the typical fine acting and direction you'd expect. The only serious negative, and you cannot blame the filmmakers for this, is that the print is pretty bad starting about one hour into the movie.

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soren19b
1936/09/21

It is a shame that this film is not available for wider viewing. I had the opportunity of seeing it at an Ozu retrospective in Cleveland. This film measures up to the other great classic Ozu films. The impact of Ozu's films works in much the same way as Japanese painting. There is great power in its open spaces and silences. They lend greater power to the words and emotions that are expressed. The dignity of the characters as they struggle with life is moving. Ozu is a masterof world cinema because he deals with themes of universal import and he does so with impeccable style. Especially noteworthy in this film is his effective use of music and sound. All in all, a very worthwhile experience

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thsieh_83
1936/09/22

"The Only Son" is Ozu's first "talkie" - and utilizes sounds in an efficient, restrained manner to help tell the story with calm grace. The beautiful simplicity that pervades the piece is classical Ozu, and amplifies the poignant tale of a mother coming back to visit her son, after sacrificing her livelihood to ensure he achieves higher education. When she realizes that he is unsatisfied with his life as a night-school teacher, a general melancholic tone begins to unfold through the progression of the narrative. The ending is nicely done, and overall, the film is crafted in that spare, simple perfection that is the stylistic hallmark of Ozu's cinema.

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