From the outset of Ozu’s career, these four-and-a-bit silent movies (one is just an 11-minute fragment) present a startlingly different view of the director most of us know from his later works (Tokyo Story et al).
Slapstick, farcical jokes, a camera that delights in panning and tracking, an open admiration for the work of Borzage and Harold Lloyd…
Yet now and then, a hint of melancholia underlying the gags foreshadows what’s to come. With one exception, prints are scuffed and fogged, but there’s still plenty to enjoy.
