Record of a Tenement Gentleman (“Nagaya shinshiroku”)
Directed by Yasujirô Ozu
Written by Tadao Ikeda and Yasujirô Ozu
1947/Japan
Shôchiku Eiga
First viewing/Hulu Plus
[box] Some mothers are kissing mothers and some are scolding mothers, but it is love just the same, and most mothers kiss and scold together. ~Pearl S. Buck[/box]
Ozu sets his first post-War film in a Tokyo where residents live on the margins, scrounging for everyday items like mirrors and garden hoses and waiting for food to become available.
In this atmosphere, a fortune-teller (Chishû Ryô) finds a lost or abandoned homeless boy who will not stop following him. He takes him home but his flat mate seems to be beset by romantic difficulties (we overhear this in one of the most bizarre film openings ever) and is unwilling to take the child. The two dump the boy for “one night” on neighbor Tane (Chôko Iida). Tane, a childless widow, resists taking the child and is even less impressed when he turns out to be a bedwetter with fleas.
The very next day Tane makes the long walk to the neighborhood where the boy last lived with his father. The father has moved. Now Tane curses the father and does all in her power to lose the boy. But no such luck. So they continue their fretful co-existence until the day Tane wets the bed again and runs away and Tane finds she will search high and low until she finds him.
This film ends on an uncharacteristically dogmatic note with Tane calling for a return to the old ways, before “modern” self-centeredness took hold. This somewhat mars the proceedings which are basically light and airy. Ozu had a special way with children and it is totally evident here. This would also be worth watching just to see Ryô entertain his neighbors with a recitation from his old days with a peep-show.
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