Tokyo-Ga

In the spring of 1983 Wim Wenders goes to Tokyo, looking for the city in Ozu's films. What he finds is something else: pachinko parlours, plastic food in windows, golf driving ranges and a cemetery. He described the film as a diary on film. The documentary runs two lines together. On one side a direct examination of how Ozu worked, on the other the Tokyo of the present. Its most valuable passages are two interviews. Yuharu Atsuta, Ozu's cinematographer over many years, explains how the master fixed the height and the measure of the camera, and by the end of the conversation he is close to weeping. Chishu Ryu, Ozu's constant actor, walks through the cemetery. Werner Herzog also appears in the film. It is a co-production between the United States and West Germany and runs 92 minutes. The talk moves through French, English, Japanese and German. It is divided into eleven sections and the last is a goodbye. It screened in Un Certain Regard at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival. Who it is for: people who love Ozu and are curious about personal essays on cinema. Who it is not for: anyone who has never seen an Ozu film. The whole thing rests on a comparison, and without the other side you are left with travel footage.