A Story of Floating Weeds / Floating Weeds

The great Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu is best known for his signature "tatami mat" style, so named because he frequently filmed scenes from a low angle, as if the camera were a silent observer, sitting on the floor. The Criterion Collection's double-feature DVD set of A Story of Floating Weeds (1934) and Floating Weeds (1959) demonstrates how Ozu's style evolved over filming two versions of the same story 25 years apart. Ozu was justifiably proud of this meticulous character study, revolving around a traveling Kabuki troupe faced with dramatic revelations as they perform in a rural village. The troupe's master has a son, from a former lover whom he is visiting for the first time in a dozen years. Unaware of his parentage, the now-grown son thinks the visitor is his rarely-seen uncle, and the master's mistress, discovering her lover's secret family, plots to undermine their relationship by urging a young actress to seduce the son, knowing that this would enrage the master's discreet familial pride. By story's end, all of these central relationships will undergo deep and resonant change. The 1934 version is a silent film (despite the common use of sound at the time); for the 1959 remake, Ozu switched the setting to a seaside town, and displayed a more casual acceptance of human foibles that makes the remake (Ozu's first film in color) relatively calm and compassionate when contrasted with the more turbulent tone of the '34 silent. Having grown as an artist, Ozu was at his stylistic peak here, and his artistry is eloquently examined in audio commentaries by preeminent Japanese film expert and dialogue translator Donald Richie (on the '34 film) and film critic Roger Ebert (on Floating Weeds), who provide astute and thorough appreciations of the parallel structures, stylistic evolution, and cultural specifics of films that, until the early 1970s, were considered "too Japanese" for an international audience. Thanks to the Criterion Collection's typically flawless presentation of these two films, they can now be readily appreciated by cinephiles around the world. Highly recommended. (J. Shannon)