“Good Morning” is an entertaining and hilarious Japanese film that is so different from director Yasujiro Ozu’s previous and later works. But I also look at the significance of the film of when it was filmed and the Japanese lifestyle that is showcased and how Western culture started to permeate in Japan in the late 50’s which is what I found so fascinating. Â Â Definitely a film worth recommending.
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TITLE: Good Morning – THE CRITERION COLLECTION #84 (aka “Ohayo”)
DURATION: 93 Minutes
DVD INFORMATION: Monoraul, Dolby Digital Mono, 1:33: Aspect Ratio, 1953, Color
COMPANY: THE CRITERION COLLECTION
RELEASED: August 15, 2000
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu
Screenplay by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu
Music by Toshiro Mayuzumi
Cinematography by Yuuharu Atsuta
Edited by Yoshiyasu Hamamura
Production Design by Tatsuo Hamada
Starring:
Koji Shitara as Minoru
Masahiko Shimazu as Isamu
Keiji Sada as Heichiro Fukui
Yoshiko Kuga as Setsuko Arita
Chishu Ryu as Keitaro Hayashi
Kuniko Miyake as Tamiko
Haruko Sugimura as Kikue Haraguchi
Kyouko Izmi as Midori Maruyama
Toyo Takahashi as Shige Okubo
Sadako Sawamura as Kayoko Fukui
Eijiro Tono as tomizawa
Teruko Nagaoka as Mrs. Tomizawa
Eiko Miyoshi as Grandma Haraguchi
Haruo Tanaka as Haraguchi
Akira Oizumi as Akira Maruyama
Ozu’s hilarious Technicolor re-working of his silent I Was Born, But…, Good Morning (Ohayo) is the story of two young boys in suburban Tokyo who take a vow of silence after their parents refuse to buy them a television set. Shot from the perspective of the petulant brothers, Good Morning is an enchantingly satirical portrait of family life that gives rise to gags about romance, gossip and consumerism of modern Japan.
Recently, I have had this urge to watch a Yasujiro Ozu film which I have never seen before. THE CRITERION COLLECTION has been very devoted to the popular director from Japan with several releases of his films in the United States and one film that I have always wanted to watch and have never gotten to was “Ohayo” aka in the US as “Good Morning”.
Many of Ozu’s films typically feature aging and in many cases elderly father’s who fear that they are wasting their daughters lives because the daughters are dedicated to family and taking care of the parents that they have not had a chance to experience life and love for themselves.
But I heard that his 1959 film “Good Morning” was among Ozu’s most lighthearted, hilarious films about a Japanese family but very different from his previous works. And dare I say, it was probably one of the first films to use flatulence as a gag throughout the film. So, needless to say that nearly a decade after its release on DVD, I had to hunt this DVD down.
“Good Morning” takes place in the suburban Tokyo where homes live in close proximity to each other. Some homes that capture that original Japanese traditional style of home but also combines it with a Western American style of home with the white picket fence all around.
The first half of the film features a group of young students and adults who live in a neighborhood of suburban Tokyo. The kids enjoy a joke of pressing on each other’s forehead which they then fart. The kids are supposedly eating pumice stone (or the powder of it) which enables them to be gassy but one of the kids, unfortunately is unable to producer a fart and somewhat ends up sharding in his pants.
But what the kids enjoy the most which is watching television. A lot of them hang out with this Bohemian neighbors who are seen wearing their pajamas all day or singing scat while walking through the neighborhood. But of course, the mothers of the children are not too thrilled that the kids are bypassing their studies to watch television.
Director Ozu then focuses on the adults in the film. How the wives practice gossip and how Mrs. Haraguchi, the leader of the women’s club who receives the club dues from the other housewives said that she has never received payment and now the other housewives wonder what happened to the money. When Mrs. Haraguchi of the group (who denies receiving the payment), she becomes the talk of the neighborhood as the family has bought a new washing machine, the other women wonder if their money was used for that purchas.
For Mrs. Hayashi, the treasurer of the club, she confronts Mrs. Haraguchi telling her that she gave the money to her mother. So, as the film focuses on the gossip that happens among the housewives, we then see a variety of things in Japan such as the occasional door-to-door business people trying to sell products such as rubber bands, pencils, toothbrushes, etc. (note: The business people and occasional neighbors do not knock on the doors and end up opening the doors of their neighbors and sitting in their entry way) But we start to see how these salespeople are a nuisance to home owners at that time.
As for the husbands in the film, they talk about retirement and as part of Japanese culture today, as it was back then, heading to the bar and going out for a drink before heading home.
But the film then starts to zero in on the Hayashi family. The Hayashi children: Minoru and his younger brother Isamu (the main protagonist children in the film) are bored at home and dislike how their parents tell them to avoid going to the neighbors and not watch television (mainly because they think the housewife is a cabaret singer). This starts to anger Minoru as he doesn’t understand why his family can’t just buy one. An argument takes place and when Minoru pushes his parents buttons, their father who is angered, tells them to be quiet and not say any more words.
So, in a protest to his family not buying a television, Minoru and his brother do just what their father has said… not to say anymore words and literally not talk anymore. This sets off a chain of events where the kids inability to talk or say hello to the housewives early in the morning starts to make them think that Mrs. Hayashi is angry at the housewives and have told their children not to talk to them. Meanwhile, the children who were active in school are no longer saying a word and causing their teachers and their tutors distress and making them wonder why the kids are no longer talking.
Will Minoru and Isamu’s silence work in their favor and lead to the family buying a television? Or will their silence continue to be come problematic?
VIDEO & AUDIO:
“Good Morning” is a film presented in its original aspect ration of 1:33:1 and features a newer digital transfer created from a 35mm low-contrast composite print. This was one of the six films in which director Yasujiro Ozu used color and for the most part, I found “Good Morning” to be wonderful in the fact that we are seeing a time capsule of Japanese culture as it is becoming westernized. It has been over a decade since World War II but to see how American culture has permeated into suburban Tokyo with the white picket fences, children learning English classes, people making money through translations, a more westernized home versus the Japanese traditional home. These things were captured in this 1959 film.
As for picture quality, the film is not exactly pristine as you will see dust and film warping throughout the film but it’s not so bad where the film is unwatchable. THE CRITERION COLLECTION used a newer digital transfer but it would be interesting to see if they ever re-release this film via Blu-ray, if new technology would be able to remove the dust and scratches.
Audio is in Dolby Digital Mono and I chose to watch the film with my receiver set at “stereo on all channels” in order to hear the audio from all around me via my 7.2 setup versus it being center channel driven. But overall, dialogue is clear.
Subtitles are in English and features nice and thick white subtitles.
SPECIAL FEATURES:
“Good Morning” features no special features but a “color bar” test. There is a four-page booklet featuring Rick Prellinger (an archivist and filmmaker) who writes about this film and director Yasujiro Ozu.
After watching the film, I can understand why this film was enjoyable but also how the film is almost a time capsule of a time in Japan who where American/Western culture was starting to permeate into Japanese culture. This is important to note because for the most part, one of the reasons why Ozu’s films rarely made it into the United States because many distributors looked at his films as being “too Japanese”. And I can only have wished there were some sort of recordings back then, because I would have loved to hear or read an interview in regards to Ozu’s thoughts in the making of this film.
It was also good to see that Ozu style of filmmaking in which he doesn’t use the 180 degree rule and used over-the-shoulder dialogue scenes. So, the shots used in the film feature the actors and actresses talking directly to you on screen. My young son who joined me for a short while even asked me during the film “Dad, why does it look like the people are talking to me?”. That’s a characteristic of Ozu’s style of filmmaking.
“Good Morning” was a very fun film that is simple and captures human behavior. Minoru makes the biggest point in the film where he criticizes adults for meaningless conversations. Where conversations are either good morning, good afternoon, the weather is nice today and the conversations have no substance.  That was a smart thing for the child to say because we see that emptiness in the conversations of the adults.
I also found it so interesting to see the simplicity of life before television and we are seeing that moment of time before households owned a TV and the children being so enamored by it.
Minoru and Isamu are just adorable children to watch and its just the certain behaviors, especially from little Isamu that is so natural as he walks around the hallway making punching movements or jumping. Things that kids do but you just never see in a film. I thought those little details in life was fun to see in this film.  And as for the children… sure, there are a good number of fart jokes in the film (which is actually not as bad as it reads in my review because its not meant to be disgusting especially compared to how flatulence sounds in today’s modern films).
As for a release from THE CRITERION COLLECTION, as mentioned earlier, the company has released a good number of Ozu films throughout the years but for this release, the only thing that I wish it had was any kind of special feature. May it be Ozu interviews, audio interviews or even a commentary from a film scholar who is familiar with Ozu’s work. Even the original Japanese theatrical trailer. Anything is better than nothing. But that is the only downer but overall, this film is still worth watching.
Overall, “Good Morning” is an entertaining and hilarious Japanese film that is so different from Ozu’s previous and later works. But I also look at the significance of the film of when it was filmed and the Japanese lifestyle that is showcased and how Western culture started to permeate in Japan in the late 50’s which is what I found so fascinating. Â Â Definitely a film worth recommending.