In his commentary accompanying A Story of Floating Weeds (1934), Donald Richie defines modernity in film narrative as “a style of telling which is extraordinarily concise”. He further explains, “the form [of that narrative] is the shape of the story itself, and vice versa. It’s one that elides almost as much as it includes” (14:08)*. Although Ozu created this film after the unofficial end of the silent era, his narrative and filmmaking styles were (and would continue to be) markedly subtler than both contemporary and earlier silent film. In American cinema during the silent era, many performers originally trained in popular theatre, where exaggerated acting techniques and melodramatic situations were conventional. Many works of performing arts from this period would have been appealing because they made their audiences feel strong emotions. In contrast, Ozu consciously avoided forcing emotions upon his audience. He relied on his audience’s sensibilities.
“This kind of modernism”, which Richie refers to as Ozu’s dependency on the audience’s intuition, “plus the great willingness of Ozu to elide parts of its story, to allow us to figure out things for ourselves, this is a part of modernism. The playing down of emotion, as seen in this film—we don’t get to see any, you know, violent crying scenes. We get some violent slapping scenes, but nobody really bursts into tears on camera and if they’re going to bursts into tears, then they turn off camera themselves. We don’t have to watch them. This also, I would maintain, this lowering of the emotional temperature, is very modernistic of Ozu, in that modernist works have no use for this sort of Victorian kind of displayed emotion” (16:25).
The above clip (57:25)** is one of the most turbulent scenes of the film, yet its true power comes from its tension, rather than its violence. Whereas those brief explosions of physical anger expel the tension between the characters, their competing stares bottle it up, maintaining its suspense. Otaka speaks in dialogue with Kihachi’s inability to translate his violent temper into words. This further illustrates their present discord. The similarity between Richie’s words, “figure out things for ourselves”, and Otaka’s “Just think how I feel” is fortunate; given little information about Otaka and Kihachi’s relationship before this rift, which disinclines them to explain their motivations, the audience must intuit the depth of Otaka’s jealousy. Her words, lost on Kihachi, encourage our participation in the meaning of the story.
*Time stamps indicate that the film is played with audio commentary by Donald Richie. A Story of Floating Weeds. Dir Ozu, Yasujiro (Yasujiro, Ozu). Criterion Collection, 1934.
**The above clip is taken from A Story of Floating Weeds (1934) and is shuared for educational purposes only.