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Black
and White . 105 minutes
Shochiku Ofuna Studio
Written By
Ozu Yasujiro
Ikeda Tadao
Cinematography
Atsuta Yuharu
Music By
Ito Senji
Cast
Fujino Hideo (Toda Shintaro)
Katsuragi Ayako (Mrs Toda)
Yoshikawa Mitsuko (Chizuru)
Saito Tatsuo (Shinichiro)
Miyake Kuniko (Kazuko)
Saburi Shin (Shojiro)
Tsubouchi Yoshiko (Ayako)
Takamine Mieko (Setsuko)
Kuwano Kayoko (Tokiko)
Kawamura Sokichi (Suzuki)
Ida Choko (Kiyo)
Hayama Masao (Ryokichi)
Takagi Mayuko (Mitsuko)
Ryu Chishu (Friend)
Sakamoto Takeshi (Antique Dealer)
Tani Reiko (Photographer)
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Synopsis
The wealthy Toda family gather in the ancestral
home to celebrate the matriarch's birthday. However,
their outward harmony is shattered by the sudden
death of the patriarch. He has in left a legacy
of debts. This leaves Mrs Toda and youngest daughter
Setsuko homeless, penniless, and at the mercy
of the inhospitable married children. Tired of
being shunted around, they move into their dilapidated
seaside villa. When youngest son Shojiro returns
from Tianjin, he reapproaches his siblings at
their fathers memorial service. He offers to take
Mrs Toda and Setsuko with him to China, and agrees
to Setsuko's advice to marry her humble friend
Tokiko.
Thoughts from Ozu
The family atmosphere here is similar to that
of The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice. For this
very reason, I paid special attention to making
material love the dominating theme. The final
scenes were shot hastily. The company said, "if
we don't wrap up the film today, we will miss
the screening schedule." "Today"
actually meant "two hours!". I had to
resort to a long shot to finish up. Although this
was not the most ideal way to film, one could
not tell from the composition. If everyone got
on well and had a good time during production,
then I would become fond of that film, irrespective
of the end result. In that respect, Brothers and
Sisters of the Toda Family is a work I'm pleased
with. I worked with Saburi Shin and Takamine Mieko
for the first time. By the standards of those
times, it was a classy production which perhaps
explains why it become a box office hit and refuted
the theory that my films could never sell. Ever
since then, my films had started to perform better
at the box office.
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Background
The
38th film, shot from October 1940 to February
1941. On July 1937, the clash between the Japanese
and the Chinese armies in the Peiping suburb at
Lukouchiao (Marco Polo Bridge) enlarged the Sino-Japanese
war. Ozu was drafted and from September 1937 to
July of 1939 he was on the vast Chinese battle
front for almost two years. During this time,
the wartime reorganization made steady progress.
Film was considered to have a most influential
power on the masses and therefore, the intensification
of state control was inevitable, carried out by
the establishment of the Motion Picture Law in
1939. This notorious law also provided for censorship
of the screenplay before shooting. Ozu returned
from war in 1939, confronted with the new law.
After his return, Ozu wrote a screenplay together
with Ikeda Tadao, The Flavor of Green Tea Over
Rice (Ochazuke no aji). The story depicts
the same world as What Did the Lady Forget?, but
achieves as even denser, more beautiful maturity,
set in an uptown mansion. Since this rich bourgeois
world was too attractive, it was considered a
risk. Ozu was ordered to rewrite it completely,
and finally withdrew the script. For the following
project, he and Ikeda decided to keep the uptown
surrounding, and to put an unassailable mother
film, hahamono, to the fore. Overcoming
various difficulties, the film Brothers and
Sisters of the Toda Family arose. For the
third time, Oz used Over the Hill (1920),
this time adapting the plot of this American hahamono.
In the same way as A Mother Should Be Loved,
the first scene is set in a mansion in Kojimachi.
The change of the living conditions on the occasion
of the father's death involves the social decline.
Until then, Ozu depicted the core family of three
generations, widening his scale. (For Ozu, this
is the premise for the breaking up of the family.)
The description of the uptown customs is dense
and abundant (Ozu borrowed some details of the
novel of Ton Satomi, whom he venerated) and makes
this film rich in content. Having an all star
cast, the film was also a box office hit. The
dissolving of the family caused by the father's
death also touched Ozu's inner feelings. However,
the conclusion of Shojiro taking his mother and
sister to China is not an easy, opportunistic
means of setting considering the wartime regulations.
In Ozu's world, this is an advance towards "outside
Tokyo" territories. This is not a passive
"leaving Tokyo" and "going to exile"
like in Tokyo Chorus, but an intentional,
active action, understandable as a reflection
of Ozu's two years of war experience.
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Personal
Thoughts and Comments
The Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family is
one of the few upper-class family films Ozu made
but it very much captures the essence of what
he would later master in his gendai-geki
films. This film marks Ozu's earliest transition
into his stage of postwar masterpiece. Brothers
and Sisters of the Toda Family is the first of
two films Ozu made during the war (this film was
made after Ozu spent two years fighting China
in the Sino-Japanese war). Ozu's personal experience
certainly reflect in the film but this also stands
as a key transition from his early work and his
postwar films, as Brothers and Sisters of the
Toda Family captures various elements of each
era. Again at the center of the family lies the
separation of family which is caused by the untimely
death of the father. The film recalls Ozu's postwar
films Tokyo Story (in it's tensions between generations)
and End of the Summer (in in the deconstruction
of the family), but also reveals some of his early
work as the family begins to suffer with financial
difficulties. This film displays early traces
of Ozu's mastery with visual expression and composition,
as it marked his first collaboration with cinematographer
Atsuta Yuharu (who he worked with on almost every
film afterwards). This film also was the first
box office success in Japan for Ozu who would
soon become known as "The most Japanese
of all directors", which at the time
made his films nearly inaccessible to those outside
of Japan.
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