Reorienting Ozu by Jinhee Choi

Author:Jinhee Choi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2017-03-18T04:00:00+00:00

VERNACULAR HUMOR AND THE “AMERICANIZED” SENSORIUM OF SPECTATORS

To return to our story: on the night before his death, Mr. Toda (Fujino), seated side by side with his wife, has a blissful moment chatting about their grandchildren. After taking off his glasses and massaging his face, he fumbles around for his glasses like a blind person. This stint induces what Gerald Mast called the “comic climate,”29 as his spectacles are clearly sitting right in front of his nose. He shrugs off his folly, saying,

“Oh, I am tipsy.” His round black celluloid spectacles echo Harold Lloyd, and his performance of a merry drunkard is reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin. This mild “act of frivolity” survived censorship, but Shojiro’s flirtation with a geisha at a tea house had to be deleted.30 Such was the brutality and unpredictability of wartime film censorship that the production of humor had quickly shifted from a profilmic act of a comedian to a director’s external controls over camera position, shot composition, editing, and sound effects.

Ozu’s fabrics of cinematic humor, I suggest, relate to what Michel Chion designates the verbocentric style. This style, he says, is “the classical form of the sound film that was established by the late 1930s and is still common today.”31 On the night of Toda’s wake, the eldest son, Shinichiro, rests in his study. His right-hand man, Mr. Suzuki, shows up to give a briefing on important chores ahead. Shot from a distance with little action, the sequence is highly verbocentric. The spectator is informed, for example, that Suzuki has already contacted major newspaper companies to print “this” (kore)—meaning Toda’s obituary—in the upcoming morning edition (fig. 9.3).

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