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"Seeking love is like climbing a waterfall." The flea outbreak in the theatrical audience becomes the itching-powder prank in Vidor's Stella Dallas, fitting as Yasujiro Ozu here helps himself to much of The Champ. The single father (Takeshi Sakamoto) works at the brewery and, when not easily roused in the morning, takes a bat to the shin courtesy of his son (Tomio Aoki). He falls for a destitute young woman (Nobuko Fushimi) who prefers to see him as a kindly uncle, her heart belongs to his best friend, a stern ex-soldier (Den Obinata). Lost in thought after being demoted from potential beau to grudging matchmaker, the fellow pours sake with one hand and with the other twists a cotton swab in and out of his ear. "You're a stubborn bastard. But then so am I." The comedy is beautifully judged, as in the trajectory of a ratty coin purse during a storyteller's performance, and then stinging slaps excavate the tension between generations, "a capricious place," Ozu's world. The boy's froggy deadpan is not thrown off by a bandaged eye, at the schoolyard he's got a fistful of rocks for colleagues who mock his old man's illiteracy. Back on his feet after being brought down by an overdose of sweets, he promptly teases the grumbling dad: "I bet you were hoping for funeral cake." Clotheslines in the neighborhood give a foreglimpse of De Sica, industrial silos a premonition of Antonioni. "To be a good father once in a while" is the challenge, the protagonist leaps off a boat and swims back home while repeating his son's joke—an impulsive gesture in a largely predetermined landscape, as happily immersed in the elements as Boudu the year before. With Choko Iida, Reiko Tani, and Chishu Ryu. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |