been worried
whether you're all right.
He said you might be pregnant.
Is that true?
I will never have a child.
Never.
Why not?
And if did have one,
I wouldn't abandon it like you did.
I'd love it with all my heart.
Akiko!
I hate you!
His scripts were difficult.
NOBUO NAKAMURA - ACTOR
His dialogue wasn't written
in normal sentences,
the way most writers
write out sentences.
The lines were written out
exactly the way they sound in real life.
The living words
were captured on the page.
I'd feel the life in the words
just from reading the script,
and I'd realize his high expectations
and get a little scared.
Suppose my line was something like,
''If I go to work,
I have to face that awful boss of mine.''
Instead of writing the line normally
and leaving the inflections to me,
Ozu would use special spellings
or notations that showed
exactly how he wanted me
to inflect or slur the words.
I was green, and Ozu was the master,
YOJI YAMADA - DIRECTOR
the most powerful director at Shochiku.
But like all young people, I was
inclined to rebel against authority,
plus I thought he was
too conservative
in his writing,
his camera technique, everything.
So I spent a lot of time
disagreeing with him.
We all swore
we'd never make films like his.
I guess pretty much all of
his assistant directors felt that way.
But the films you subsequently made
as a director in your own right
are often regarded as being
Ozu-like or Shochiku-like,
and you are seen
as carrying on Ozu's tradition.
You must have felt differently
once you became a director.
I suppose once I became a director,
I began to see just how tall
a mountain Ozu represented.
Strive as I might, the summit
remained out of sight.
Then some people started saying
things like that -
that my films showed
a strong Ozu influence.
It took me completely by surprise.
I'd never thought about it.
It made me realize
what a strange beast tradition is.
What do you think the essence
of the Shochiku tradition is?
When I was still
a young assistant director,
my impression of all
the old directors, including Ozu,
was that they were
very fashionable and sophisticated.
As I say, Ozu was no exception.
His clothes, the restaurants he went to,
always had to be the best.
I suppose he'd had this
''brand consciousness'' since he was young.
He belonged to the
refined, with-it crowd
who knew all about
the entertainment world of old Edo,
from Kabuki to the puppet theater
and the old raconteurs.
Their knowledge of all these arts
far exceeded my generation's,
and I think they injected large portions
of that knowledge into their films.
I think Ozu's early films
especially were very influenced
by storytelling techniques
of the old raconteurs.
I think this applies
to Shochiku films in general, too.
The stories the old raconteurs performed
had an objective tendency or realism,
a way of looking at people
from a certain perspective.
I think Ozu's films were strongly
influenced by this old Edo tradition.
EQUINOX FLOWER
I remember the scene in Equinox Flower
where the family is eating together.
Ozu borrowed all the tableware
from a fancy restaurant,
INEKO ARIMA - ACTRESS
and the bowls and plates
and tea cups were simply gorgeous.
But then he spent half a day going
back and forth between table and camera
to get them arranged
just the way he wanted.
Meanwhile, all of us actors were getting
more nervous by the minute.
That's what it was like with him.
He had to have the real thing.
And he was just as fussy
about arranging us.
''Sit like this, with your hands here,
your eyes on this, your head this way.''
He'd spell out everything
and then tell us to speak,
correcting our every inflection,
over and over.
We weren't free to interpret
anything ourselves.
But when I look at his films now,
I understand what he was doing.
He was trying to reduce things to their
most basic essence, free of all excess.
That was his