Yasujiro Ozu is one of Japan's most famous filmmakers.  Though not as well known in the west as Akira Kurosawa, Ozu's films have a simplistic yet fascinating style.  His movies were very personal intimate affairs, often dealing with the dynamics of the relationships between family members.  Criterion has released a two-disc set containing a pair of Ozu's movies: 1934's A Story of Floating Weeds and his 1959 remake, Floating Weeds.

Both movies have the same plot.  A troupe of traveling Kabuki performers arrives in a small rural town in Japan.  The leader of the group has a secret associated with this particular village.  He has fathered a child, now an adult, with a local woman.  The boy thinks that his father was a civil servant who died long ago.  Neither of his parents wants the child to know his father is a low-class traveling actor.

With the leader of the troupe spending a good amount of time with his boy's mother, his current mistress gets suspicious.  Discovering where he goes everyday, the actress figures out whom the woman and young man are that her lover is spending so much time with.  Growing jealous, the actress convinces a younger member of their company to seduce the young man to bring about his ruin.

While these movies have all the trappings of a melodrama, they are so much more than that.  Ozu is able to take this simple story, which he wrote, and turn it into a beautiful work of art.

The movies both have excellent composition.   Many of the shots look like photographs, with characters framed by windows and doorways.  The camera was placed very low too, below eye level in many scenes, as if you were sitting down in the room with the actors, watching their lives play out.

Ozu was had a very simplistic style, and that is one of his great strengths.  The photography in his movies is extremely minimal; he is very restrained in these films.  The camera moves only rarely, there are no pans or dissolves.  The film was made with a stationary camera that acts as a voyeur, peeping into the lives of the people in the story.  This intimate style makes the emotions and actions of the characters seem even more profound and real.

The story itself is restrained also.  The plot unfolds slowly and deliberately without a lot of fanfare.  There are a lot of still shots, and Ozu give his actors time to react to a situation, he doesn't rush the story just to please the audience.  But these movies are not dull or plodding.  They are a carefully constructed series of beautiful images that tell a story.
 
There is a subtle difference is the two movies.  At first glance, they appear to be identical, with the same plot and even similar scenes.  But watching them back-to-back, you notice that there are differences in the way the actors play their roles, and the tone is slightly different. The remake is a little more dramatic, and some of this can be attributed to the use of color.  But both of these movies are equally fascinating to experience.  These are two great films from a master filmmaker.
 

The silent film boasts of a "new and improved subtitle translation" but I wasn't impressed with the new titles.  While I don't read Japanese and can't testify to the accuracy of most of the translations, there was one glaring error that I did catch.  While playing a game of Go, the title cards are translated as if the characters were playing chess.  They talk about being in check, a condition that does not exist in Go.  I'm sure the translator did this to make the movie more acceptable to western audiences, but it is not an accurate translation.  It makes me wonder what other changes to the original titles were made to accommodate foreign audiences.

Audio:

The audio for the silent A Story of Floating Weeds consisted of an newly commissioned piano score by Donald Sosin.  This 5.0 soundtrack is nice, and the music fits the action on screen to a large extent.  There were on sound effects added to this track.

The 1959 movie had its original mono track restored for this edition.  Both soundtracks sounded very good.  They were clean and clear, with no hiss or distortion.  The dialog in the remake was easy to hear, and sounded great.

Video:

As is usual with Criterion releases, the picture quality was very good.  Both of these films are presented in their original full frame aspect ratio, and have been restored to top quality condition.  The older film had a little light emulsion damage is a couple of spots, but this wasn't very noticeable.  The contrast was very good, and the detail is astounding.  It looked remarkably clear for a movie that is 70 years old.

The later movie looked even better.  The colors were bright and strong, the contrast was good, and the lines were tight and clean.  There was some fine grain to the picture, but it doesn't distract or even seem out of place.  Neither film had any easily noticeable digital artifacts.  These two films both look great, as clear and pristine as when they were first shown.

The Extras:

Each film has a commentary.  Ozu scholar Donald Richie, who also wrote the liner notes, narrates the earlier film.  His commentary was informative, but rather dry.  He was a little too analytical and scholarly for my tastes, and his comments came across as dry.  He obviously is very knowledgeable about Ozu and his films, he just wasn't able to bring the enthusiasm he must have for this filmmaker into the commentary.

The remake has a commentary by Roger Ebert.  Ebert admits in the beginning of his talk that he isn't an Ozu scholar, but even so he does a very good job describing the film and pointing out things that might be missed.  His enthusiasm for the movie shines through, and he does a wonderful job of using the video on the screen to show why the movie is so highly revered.  I've heard several commentaries that Ebert has done for various films, and they are all entertaining and informative.  Hearing his comments on this movie was a treat.

There is also a trailer for the 1959 film.

Final Thoughts:

These two intimate yet engrossing films are wonderful to watch.  Criterion has done it again by presenting a pair of excellent transfers with interesting commentaries.  This disc belongs in any student's library.  Highly Recommended.