Floating Weeds

Ozu remaking himself. Twenty-five years on, he made his 1934 silent A Story of Floating Weeds again, in colour. A travelling theatre troupe arrives in a small coastal town. Komajuro, who leads it, has a former lover there and a grown son who believes he is an uncle. When his current lover finds out, jealousy leads her to send the troupe's young actress to seduce the boy. It was shot not at Ozu's own studio, Shochiku, but at Daiei, with Kazuo Miyagawa as cinematographer, the man who shot Rashomon. Ozu's low fixed camera and Miyagawa's sense of colour and light meet here, and the rain scene is the best-known result: two people on opposite sides of a narrow street, rain between them, shouting. Ganjiro Nakamura plays Komajuro and Machiko Kyo his current lover. Who it is for: viewers who like Ozu in colour and classical Japanese melodrama. Who it is not for: anyone wanting pace. It is calm, and emotionally it sits in a coarser, louder place than his family films.