Japanese Portraits: Pictures of Different People Read Free Page B

Ofuna studios was filled with a full-scale Japanese inn: two eight-mat rooms, beyond them a courtyard, and on the far side the full three floors of a wing of the inn. Here Ozu was making Late Autumn.
    I knew a bit about the film. Its structure was similar to Late Spring, made eleven years before: a daughter gets married and leaves her single parent behind alone. In the earlier film (played by Setsuko Hara), she left her father on his own (Chishu Ryu). Now, the mother (Setsuko Hara) would be left behind by her daughter (Yoko Tsukasa).
    Just as Ozu's themes were always much the same, so his methods had become consistent: an almost unvarying camera position, a single means of punctuation—the straight cut. And just as fades in and out and dissolves were spurned, so in these later films the camera was not allowed to turn (pan) or to move about (dolly). Out of these restrictions would come a film that was free and filled with life. I wanted to see how it was done.
    When I was brought in, the actors had just completed the first part of the scene slated for that day. Chishu Ryu (this time playing Setsuko's brother-in-law, owner of the inn) had finished his lines and was sitting on one side, watching, as I had heard he often did.
    After a cigarette, Ozu was ready to continue. The next episode had Setsuko and Yoko, mother and daughter, sitting opposite each other at a low table. The camera was about three feet off the floor (its habitual position—eye level when you sit down), facing one of the actresses.
    Ozu's method was to do one side of the conversation and then the other. Since the alternative approach would have been to turn the cam era around for each cut, the method was logical—but Ozu's way of doing it was quite his own. Each line of dialogue was considered a unit in its own right and was to be shot with reference only to itself. This is quite different from the way such scenes are shot elsewhere. While it is common enough for the two sides of a conversation to be filmed separately, the director usually does not stop the camera after each line. The camera records the dialogue, both the feed-lines and the replies, and the whole is edited for the finished picture.
    Ozu recorded each line. He started the camera, then stopped it. His script lay open before him and he used it like a blueprint, constantly referring to it and to the sketches he had made in the margins, one drawing for each line of dialogue.
    The camera was turned toward Setsuko Hara. Ozu nodded at Yoko Tsukasa, sitting to one side, and she delivered her line of dialogue. Start, said Ozu, and his camera, Yuharu Atsuta, squatting behind his machine, began filming. The director nodded at Setsuko, who said her line. Cut, said Ozu, and Atsuta stopped filming.
    The director was apparently satisfied with the delivery and went on to the next line. Not always, however; several times during these afternoon hours of shooting he would make one or the other of the actresses repeat her line.
    One cut finished, one line of dialogue completed, Ozu began getting ready for the next. The conditions seemed in all respects identical but Ozu would nonetheless reframe each cut. Hara had not moved, yet Ozu, looking through the viewfinder, insisted on a shift of half a millimeter to the right. When I saw the finished film I noticed that in some cuts Yoko's hand towel at the bottom of the screen was more visible than in others, but generally the effect would be visible to the director alone.
    Reframing completed to his satisfaction, Ozu was ready to go on to the next line of dialogue. Cut. The camera was fiddled with. In reply to a nod from the director, Yoko made weeping sounds. Start.
    - What a nice trip we've had, said Setsuko and then wiped her eyes.
    That was the end of her side of the conversation. After a break for tea, the camera was reversed, Setsuko sat to one side and delivered her lines again, and all of Yoko's lines were filmed. This took the rest of the