I Was Born, But...

Yasujiro Ozu’s 1932 silent comedy I Was Born, But... is still entertaining today. (Japanese: 大人の見る絵本生れてはみたけれど) One of Ozu’s earliest surviving films, it zeroes in on two brothers who, with their parents, have moved from Tokyo to a relatively backward neighborhood in the suburbs. Fearing a beating from a gang of bullies, the boys play hooky from school. The chief bully claims that eating sparrow eggs toughens you up, so there’s a kind of black market trade among the school kids for these tiny, mottled ovals. When the brothers get their hands on one, their confidence gets a boost.

Meanwhile, their father (played by Tatsuo Saito) gets wind of their truancy and forces them back to school. During their absence, however, the boys have had plenty of time to mull over a few things, not least their father’s social role and standing among colleagues and superiors. At a friend’s house, they gather with other kids and parents to watch a series of short films (an incredible sequence—short silent films within a silent film), one of which shows their father playing the fool to amuse his boss. The boys are humiliated. How dare he kowtow and debase himself before his superiors? It’s their dad, after all. Until now they’ve never doubted he’s the most important man in the world. After they throw a tantrum, he tries to explain, simply, that his boss occupies a different position from his own. But this doesn’t satisfy them, and they decide to go on a hunger strike in protest.

Ozu is brilliant at family stories. Two techniques he uses to draw us into them are the low-angle shots (or “tatami shots”) he’s famous for, and his habit of filming actors straight on, giving the sense that we’re almost spectrally (though immobile) part of the scene. I Was Born, But... was made more than twenty years before Tokyo Story, though the style is distinctly Ozu, with the same charm that permeates his later work. Available on YouTube with English subtitles.