THE ONLY SON (Hitori musuko)   Director: Yasujiro Ozu Year: 1936 Runtime: 87 min. Country: Japan Language: Japanese with English subtitles Color: B&W Format: 16mm

All of Yasujiro Ozu's dramas center on family relationships and THE ONLY SON is no exception. The story is a simple one: a widowed mother sacrifices her own comfort so that her only son may continue his education and lead a happier life. When visiting him and his family in Tokyo, she is disappointed to see they're living in poverty and he is working as a lowly night-school teacher. In 1930s Japan, the global depression and Japan's surplus of college-educated young men made such a situation familiar to film-goers. What makes THE ONLY SON a moving piece of art instead of merely an indictment of a failed economic system is the specificity of the telling. It's this mother's personal sacrifice and disappointment and it's this son's individual failure and shame. Ozu does this by paring down his camera movements and scene transitions to the essentials, allowing the viewer to feel the human drama unfold. He also takes his camera to places never before depicted on Japanese movie screens, such as the rural silk-spinning factory where the mother works and the city slum where the son's family lives. THE ONLY SON was Ozu's first talking picture - he was the last major Japanese director to make the transition to sound - but one would never guess after listening to his sensitive and judicious use of off-screen sound. Just a handful of Ozu's thirty-three surviving films are available on video in the US and, sadly, THE ONLY SON is not one of them so don't miss this rare opportunity to see it. "One comes away from Ozu heartened by his human intelligence and by the gravity we have learned." — David Thomson, The Biographical Dictionary of Film     showtime Monday, April 10 at 7 pm location THE GREEN ROOM 144 West Street (across from the Comstock Hotel) admission $6 general / $4 GBFS members

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