| VHS cover artwork for Home Vision Cinema release of Good Morning. [click photo for larger version] |
The Japan portrayed here is being subtly, perhaps irrevocably, encroached upon by Western culture. Salesmen creep in and out of doorways with an array of American convenience products; a poster for The Defiant Ones (a significant title) graces the wall of the only hip couple in the housing development, the ones who have the TV set where all the kids congregate to watch sumo wrestling. And in a bar sequence, one of the characters says "Someone said TV would produce 100 million idiots!" but the context in which it’s said portends that the process of consumerism American style — television, washing machines — is inevitable.
Stylistically, this is one of Ozu’s simpler films, but it’s as resonant in its own quiet way as his better-known work. Shot in a muted Technicolor (which looks great in the DVD’s mostly flawless transfer from a 35mm print), Good Morning has the look of an old Kodak photograph, with soft pastels predominating. The score is appropriately whimsical with one surprising, perhaps unique innovation: the boys’ farts are rendered not realistically but musically! And Ozu’s camera is typically neutral, his vision steady and unvarying as he records the comings and goings of neighbors, the boys’ hissy fits and farting contests, the subtle bickering of the women. Ozu has been criticized in some quarters as too conservative, endorsing the values of excessive courtesy and repression that afflict his characters. But Good Morning, at least, makes it clear which side he stands on. In endorsing the boys and their seemingly childish behavior, he shows that while human values can change, human nature remains happily consistent, with all its flaws.