The Only Son

Otsune is a widow working at a silk mill in the country. Her son's teacher comes to her: the boy is clever and should go on studying. She sells everything she has and sends him to Tokyo. Years pass. She goes to see him. When she arrives Ryosuke is a poorly paid teacher giving night classes; he lives in a small house, is married and has a child. He had written none of this to her. She stays a few days. Yasujirō Ozu directs. It is his first sound film. He came to sound later than other Japanese directors and went on making silent films until this one. The matter it works at is what sacrifice returns; the mother gave her life to that decision and now sees the result. Ozu blames no character; the son is not lazy, he simply could not get a footing in the city. Its best known scene is the one where the two sit and talk in a field; there the mother says everything in a single sentence. Ozu's known visual order is already established: the low camera, the fixed frame and shots of empty space. The ending offers no hope and the narrative no resolution. Who it is for: anyone curious about Japanese classics and Ozu. Who it is not for: it is very slow, little happens, and the technical quality carries the earliest sound recording of the period.