Masahiko Shimazu has 2 titles in the CriticCrunch catalog across a career spanning the 1950s through the 1960s. 1 ranks in the Top 10%, led by Good Morning.
A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of intergenerational relationships, Good Morning tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his child protagonists. Shot in stunning color and set in a suburb of Tokyo where housewives gossip about the neighbors’ new washing machine and unemployed husbands look for work as door-to-door salesmen, this charming comedy refashions Ozu’s own silent classic I Was Born, But . . . to gently satirize consumerism in postwar Japan.
Dir. Yasujirō Ozu · With Keiji Sada, Yoshiko Kuga, Chishū Ryū
The family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress from his youth.
Dir. Yasujirō Ozu · With Setsuko Hara, Yōko Tsukasa, Michiyo Aratama
