Director Series: Yasujirô Ozu’s I Graduated, But… (1929)

I Graduated, But… was the fourth of six Yasujirô Ozu-directed films released in 1929, and like two others — namely Fighting Friends — Japanese Style and A Straightforward Boy — it only exists in abridged form. Even with an explanatory note at the beginning, it clocks in at under twelve minutes, about a single reel’s worth of film; according to David Bordwell in Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema, it originally ran seven. It’s not much of a movie as it stands, but it still has several points of interest.

The Precepts of My Father: Equinox Flower (1958)

Near the end of Yasujirô Ozu’s 1958 film Equinox Flower, Wataru Hirayama (Shin Saburi) attends a middle school reunion, where one of his former classmates, Mikami (Chishû Ryû), recites a poem — a long, long poem. I’m always tempted to fast forward through it, though I never do. It wasn’t until a recent viewing of the movie — probably my third — that I considered its relevance to the story.