Tokyo Story

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Tokyo Story
Film poster
Directed by	Yasujiro Ozu
Produced by	Takeshi Yamamoto
Written by	Kôgo Noda Yasujiro Ozu
Starring	Chishu Ryu Chieko Higashiyama Setsuko Hara
Music by	Kojun Saitô
Cinematography	Yuuharu Atsuta
Editing by	Yoshiyasu Hamamura
Distributed by	Shochiku The Criterion Collection
Release date(s)	3 November 1953
Running time	136 min.
Language	Japanese
IMDb profile

Tokyo Story (東京物語, Tokyo monogatari^?) is a 1953 Japanese movie by Yasujiro Ozu, in which elderly parents from the southwestern seaside town of Onomichi visit their busy children in Tokyo — a journey which, before the introduction of the bullet train, took almost a day — only to be neglected by them. It stars Setsuko Hara, one of Japan's (and the director's) favourite actresses, as their daughter-in-law. The children genuinely wish to spend time with their parents, and do, but as they have lives and families of their own they find it difficult to maintain a balance between the two.

The story does not rely on melodramatic moments and Hollywood plot points; instead, as is common with the filmmaker's works, it is deliberately-paced. Camera shots are typically at sitting-mat level and seldom change. Once in the film the camera actually pans away from a stationary view, "more than usual"[1], film critic Roger Ebert half-humorously reports. A personal fan of Ozu's works, Ebert gave it his highest rating. Later, Ebert included it on his series of great movies[2].

Criterion Collection release

Tokyo Story is regularly listed as one of the ten greatest films ever made in Sight and Sound magazine's regular polls of directors and critics. John Walker, editor of the Halliwell's Film Guides, placed Tokyo Story top in his published list of the best 1000 films yet made. The film was included in Derek Malcolm's The Century of Films, a list of films the critic deemed artistically or culturally important and Time Magazine listed it among their All-Time greatest 100 movies. Movie preservers The Criterion Collection recently cleaned up and reissued the black and white film on a two-disc DVD set (Region 1).