Histoire d'un acteur ambulant (1934) watch online HD

Remakably similar in structure yet different in tonal effect to Ozu's more famous 1959 remake, this story of a travelling troupe's last days in a seaside village was one of Ozu's first forays into a quiet, rural background, though it still feels brisk compared to the more staid and sumptuous remake. The depictions of stage life are more slapstick-oriented than in the remake (most notably in Tokkan Kozo's hilarious turn in a full-sized dog costume), but are counterbalanced by sensitive portrayals of all the characters, especially the great, dignified lead performance by Takeshi Sakamoto. The romantic interludes are as powerful as in the remake, though without employing the overt sensuality of on-screen kissing; instead there appears to be the use of a filter or gauze to give the scenes between the young couple an otherworldly effect, which gives more emphasis of the idea of the actress employed to seduce the troupe leader's son enacting a "performance", an idea that I would have like to have seen developed even further. Even so, this is a marvellous work with a set of wonders distinguishable from that of the remake.

This film is full of the sensitive observation, the slow-building tragic emotion and the moral ambiguity of Ozu's later works. While eschewing the cheap tragedy that was already so fashionable in Japanese melodrama (you can imagine the story going in that direction for any other director), the ending leaves the viewer uncertain and unsettled, with only the vaguest hopes for all concerned.

Apart from the depiction of a rundown and pathetic acting troupe (it reminds me of Alan Mowbray's drunken Shakespearian actor in 'My Darling Clementine'), and the rural small-town atmosphere, what lingers on in the mind is the portrait of an extremely flawed man. Like the great male characters of American cinema, Ichikawa is decent but ruled by anger, regret, and a certain way of life. will Ichikawa ever really be able to change, or do justice to those he feels responsible for? But after all, actors will be actors...

In fact, if this film is to be criticized for anything, it should be done so for its lack of a really detailed look into the lives and profession of the actors. After all, Ichikawa's profession turns out to play such an important part, in the end, in the fate of his 'family'.

Ozu's direction of women (particularly Ichikawa's wronged, but vengeful, lover) is sensitive and truthful, while his his direction of children is, as always, well-observed and hilarious.

"A Story of Floating Weeds" (1934) was the second Yasujiro Ozu's film I've seen. Like with "Tokyo Story", I kept asking myself, why the film that was made so many years ago about the people who lived so far away in the world I don't know much about is so wonderfully engaging? Why was I so drawn to the characters of this human drama? The story is simple: an aging, traveling actor who is the manager of a kabuki troupe returns to a remote village where he secretly meets his former lover and her 19 year old illegitimate son, to whom he is known as "uncle." The older man finds happiness in communicating with his son who turned to be a fine young man. His current mistress, filled with jealousy because of his attachment to his secret family, hires a young beautiful girl, the member of a troupe to seduce a boy.

Directed by the great director and humanist with elegant simplicity, genuine interest to his characters and restraint, this moving film is never melodramatic or manipulative.

I liked the music score written specially for the film in 2004. I tried to watch it silent but it would take me more than one viewing to get used to no music score at all.

Seems that Ozu valued the film and thought about it a lot - he himself made a remake in color and sound 25 years later.

This early career (1934) Yasujuro Ozu silent film is a personal favorite. A seminal work for Ozu, "A Story of Floating Weeds" is a remarkably modernist, concise film, and the story is powerfully moving. This picture is often argued as Ozu's first fully-realized, and it is an easy film to appreciate, with Ozu's quiet artistry on showcase throughout. (The patent imagery is here: laundry on lines, silent stairwells, passenger trains, hanging lights, etc.; as well as the simplistic, low-angle shooting style, resulting in a film that feels much more familiar to Ozu fans than its age would indicate. Established Ozu fans should notice some outliers, though, including realistic domestic violence and several moving dolly shots). The storyline involves a downtrodden traveling theater group, whose manager is reuninted with his estranged "nephew," (who is, in actuality, his son) and the young man's mother. What follows is a quiet, somber story of familial bonds, unrealizeable love, and the often impossible nature of personal happiness. It is also very much a film about the lower classes, whose plight is subject for this, Ozu's first metaphorical title. The "Floating Weeds" refers to duckweed, a floating plant often referenced in Japanese poetry, and it is emblematic of aimlessness, and the drifting lack of meaning in life. "A Story of Floating Weeds" is a movie about the flatsom and jetsom of Japanese society, whose destination is open to chance and whim. Perhaps equally importantly, "Floating Weeds" is a story about fathers and sons. It is timeless, fundamental stuff, and I'd argue some of Ozu's best.

This is one of the earliest Ozu films widely available, and the Criterion version is outstanding in quality.

Its a perfect example of Ozu at his best. Its a gem of a film - beautifully shot, a perfect structure, funny, sad and fascinating. The story is simple enough - a traveling troupe arrive at a town, not realizing the reason the chief actor picked the town is because an old flame of his lives here with his son. His current girlfriend in her jealousy tries to stir things up, but things don't turn out as either expect.

What is most striking about the film is just how modern it seems. The characters are believable and funny, the female characters are strong and willful, while even the minor characters are nicely sketched out. The acting is nothing short of brilliant, which makes the whole film very entertaining - this is no period piece of academic interest only, its a great work of art and a wonderful film - a masterpiece really.

Warning: Some plot points are revealed in this review

One of the last silent films by Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu (later remade by Ozu himself in in color in 1959) is about a traveling kabuki troupe arriving to a small town in Japan. The troupe's leader, Kihachi (Takeshi Sakamoto) uses the occasion to meet his old lover and their grown son (who believes Kihachi is his uncle), but his current lover Otaka (pretty, ethereal Rieko Yagumo) does not appreciate this when she learns about it, so she convinces a fellow actress of the troupe to seduce Kihachi's son. Kihachi, obviously, doesn't react well either when he learns about this. Reportedly, Ozu based this film on an American film from 1928 called "The Barker".

There are few differences from the 1959 remake. For instance, here the kabuki troupe arrives to a mountain town in a train, instead of arriving to a coastal village by boat. Secondary characters are less shown. But mostly, both films are very similar, almost scene by scene, including the famous part where they are shouting over each other across a rainy street or the finale with Kihachi and his now reconciled lover drinking sake in the night train. The actor playing Kihachi, though, is about two decades younger than Ganjiro Nakamuro in the 1959 version.

Overall, this movie is not, in my opinion, as accomplished as the remake, but is still very well worth seeing, and one of the highlights of Ozu's silent films.

I was able to see The Story of Floating Weeds for the first time recently, thanks to the Criterion Collection's DVD.

I was led to it when I came across Roger Ebert's list of his ten favorite films (written some time ago).

In his notes, Ebert claims Ozu shows us a "different cinematic language" but I find that kind of talk so much blather. Ozu uses his shots effectively to allow the actors to communicate the emotions being portrayed, especially necessary in this silent film.

A third rate company of traveling actors returns to a town after four years. The leader of the troupe had abandoned his lady in this town years before in order to tour with his company. He has fathered a son by the woman, whom he visits whenever he can, but his paternity is kept secret from his son.

What follows is the exposure of the secret and the effect it has on the lives of everyone involved, and some innocent bystanders as well.

The camera is almost always objective, the acting style is somewhat less melodramatic than in American silent films. There are excellent performances by all.

No time period is given for the story, but I have to assume it is earlier than the year the film was made (1934) because there are no automobiles, no radios, no telephones.

The enjoyment of Floating Weeds lies in the story itself and the ability of the director to tell it compellingly. If you demand car chases or food fights, this is not for you.

The Criterion DVD allows you to watch with or without the specially commissioned score. For first viewing, I recommend without.

Yasujiro Ozu was perhaps the greatest obsessional filmmaker in history. Thus, it's no surprise that not only did he rework the same themes over and again in his films, but that he also redid earlier films of his own years later, such as 1932's I Was Born But... as 1959's Good Morning. The most famed examples of this trait are 1934's silent black and white A Story Of Floating Weeds (Ukikusa Monogatari), written by Ozu and Tadao Ikeda, and 1959's sound color film, Floating Weeds (Ukigusa), written by Ozu and Kôgo Noda. Both films, whose titular metaphor revolves around the lives of itinerant actors, tell basically the same tale, in slightly different ways, with differently named characters. They follow the ups and downs of the leader of a really bad theater troupe, on its last legs (not unlike the characters from Federico Fellini's first film, Variety Lights), who lands in a town and visits an old girlfriend who bore him a son. In both films, the son believes his father is really his uncle, and the major development in the films is how the father's jealous actress girlfriend tries to sabotage things by having a pretty young actress seduce the son, thus recapitulating the father's key moment in life, one the father believes ruined his chance at stardom and happiness.

If one is thinking that this is the stuff of pure melodrama, it is. But that's true only on the surface. This is where depth and execution of an art come into play. It also abnegates claims that Ozu eschewed plot in his films for melodrama is about nothing if but plot. While it's true he did not strive for A to B to C narratives, and preferred 'organic' story growth, the fact is that all his films had plots, and good ones. But they were not plot driven, nor dependent upon the heavyhanded machinations most drama and films rely upon. The difference between having a plot and being plot driven is something most critics seem to not understand. Ozu simply removes the superfluous plot moments and adds contemplative, poetic, and metaphoric shots in their place, what are termed 'pillow shots.' The emphasis is thus not on the driving, but the driver, of plot. After all, the tale of a parent who has a long lost child is not fresh, although the way it's told can be.

As for the films, the earlier one is actually the slightly better film, mostly because it's more concise- clocking in at 86 minutes vs. the two hour remake….In defense of the later film, it has more humor (one character from the troupe claims his name is Toshiro Mifune- the great star of so many Akira Kurosawa films; a nod to Ozu's rival), and the son's reaction to the news about his father seems a bit more mature and realistic than in the earlier film, while the mother seems more resigned to her lover's leaving, rather than being devastated- as in the earlier film. But the ending of the earlier film, on the train, is better, for when we see the troupe leader reunited with his love, and see the sleeping child, the earlier film leaves no doubt that the leader is wistfully thinking of his son, while the later film does not. Another plus that the later film has is its use of color and symbolism, which is far more striking. The opening scene contrasts a lighthouse in the background with a foregrounded bottle. It is a stunning visual image, and such phallic symbols abound in the film, as bottles are repeatedly seen, and there is a scene where the local prostitutes tease the male troupe members as they suck on popsicles. We then see the lighthouse from other perspectives over the course of the film. The earlier film is not set at a seaside town, but in a rural area, and the scene of the father and son fishing is superior in the later film, for there is no oddly stylized synchronization of the pair tossing their fishing lines into the river, over and again, as in the 1934 film, and what the duo speak of- their views on the father's approach to acting, is far more cogent than in the silent version, whose major moment is when the father drops his wallet into the running water. The later version also mimetically puts the father and son in the position of the bottle in relation to the lighthouse at the film's opening. What this means, from a phallic perspective, is open to several interpretations. Another major difference between the two films is that the earlier film has more motion in it- literally. It was made before Ozu got caught in his tatami mat point of view mode, and therefore the emotion of the drama is recapitulated better in the earlier, more kinetic, film….Both A Story Of Floating Weeds and Floating Weeds are proof that not all obsessions result in negativity, a thing one might remind oneself of the next time someone speaks ill of that trait. They are also fine examples of what made Yasujiro Ozu a great artist, even if the art in them might fall just a bit shy of overall greatness. Viva obsesión!?

Ozu remade this movie 25 years later. I saw the remake first, and it is a sumptuous masterpiece. I had wondered why Ozu had chosen to remake, so I looked forward to seeing the original, though with some trepidation. The original is a lovely film, but it is no match for the remake.

Ozu is a director of assurance and confidence, coaxing from his actors exactly what he wants. ASOFW is a simple and fairly straightforward tale of a dissolute man who leads a troupe around Japan at a time when life was hard. He puts himself in the, for Japanese men, highly shameful position of accepting the hospitality of his old flame, partly to spend time with his son, whose paternity has been kept secret by common consent.

It is difficult for me to consider A Story Of Floating Weeds on its own merits, and I will not even attempt to do so. The remake flows smoothly and looks simply glorious. ASOFW seems to have been sketched in comparison. And some of the apparent 'jumps' do not quite make sense. Whereas the leader's decision to dissolve the troupe makes clear sense in the remake, it appears whimsical at best in ASOFW.

In short, if you have the choice, watch ASOFW first, then prepare to be blown away by the glory of the remake.

People float, their stories, the roles they perform and worlds they bring to life, this is the main thrust of the film.

So I have been recently surveying early Ozu as part of two personal quests: the first of these is where I'm looking for images of some purity from the first hours of cinema. The film is fine in this regard, Ozu's most renowned silent film about a kabuki actor returning with his troupe to his hometown to confront a difficult past. There is concentrated mind, a clear gaze. Composed shots, especially outdoors. But hardly any noticeable difference from his previous films. Why this is held in comparatively higher esteem than say Dragnet Girl or Passing Fancy, I posit has a lot to do with a more overt Japaneseness.

Earlier Ozus were distinctly modern: I Was Born But.. about schoolkids growing up in a rapidly Westernized Japan, Dragnet Girl about a young boxer drawn to the excitement of gangster life. Tokyo Woman unraveled like what was called a 'kammerspiel' in Weimar Germany. There was no benshi narrating these, as was the traditional norm adopted from Japanese theater. They employed the Western fashion of intertitles. Western garb for the leading players. References to movies, music records, boxing, corporate or factory work.

But this one has some of that exotic appeal that first fascinated the rest of the world about Japan. The same thing as the Mizoguchi revival in the 50's. For some reason, Western viewers are a lot more receptive to Japanese films that validate idealized preconceptions.

Now my other quest where this fits into, is films that visually or otherwise exemplify the karmic resonances that move our worlds. What kindles our emotional fires. In the best of cases, this means a storytelling part governed by a set of abstract parameters that control how we tell that story. How the world is in turn colored and appears to us. At around this time, in the West this was primarily being developed as film noir.

The Japanese are some of the most reliable to turn to for this: cultural seclusion cultivating purity, plus many actual practices for doing so - from gardening to making tea. The effort is to embody the world as it comes into being, this is the level that Western art has rarely managed to attain. It's worth getting to know about these things, if only to shatter those preconceptions. A tea ceremony is not about pomp or quaint etiquette but meditation.

So here we have a man who has abandoned his child and run off to play roles on a stage. Turns out he has become known for what is grouped together in kabuki as bandit plays, folk legends about heroic scoundrels. (a famous example of these that you have the chance to see adopted to film and from this era, is Kochiyama Soshun by Sadao Yamanaka).

Presumably this is how he views himself, a man who is wrong by conventional standards but deep inside pure.

Now and then he returns home, again playing a role. This early misdeed returns to haunt him: his son is seduced by a woman from his troupe, another actor performing a role. He learns the truth and in turn seems ready to run off. The whole thing replicates itself, recycling the same floating story. Only forgiveness can sever the destructive karma that has been set in motion.

Again this is fine and the film worth watching. What it's missing however, I believe is an additional layer that resolved ordinary drama on stage, conflating performance of the inner story with the one we are watching as our film about it. Transitory but precious humanity, rendered visually as a play passing through town. A lot of room for improvisation, as real life shapes the thing.

Imbalance that reflects impermanence is the key. Instead we get balanced drama.

If you have time and the resources and as example of what I'm talking about, I recommend that you look for a silent French film called Eldorado from '21, where a female dancer sublimates motherly woes into seductive dance. It is more primitive in some ways, but in others not.

Viewed on DVD. Intertitles = ten (10) stars; restoration = nine (9) stars. Director Yasujiro Ozu's first time at bat with this story line (he remade the same story--pretty much shot for shot--25 years later). From dramatic delivery and audience-engaging perspectives, this photo play is by far his best iteration (the first time is charm; the second just pretty to look at). Basic film building blocks (script, directing/editing, acting, and cinematography/lighting) are fully exploited and integrated here demonstrating that (when a director so desires) overall a film can be far greater than the sum of its technical components. And this movie's craftsmanship benefited greatly by being mounted at the peak of (and a bit beyond) the golden years of silent films in Japan (sound came into full bloom in Japan a few years after it occurred in the West). Acting can often be mesmerizing with performances touching but not crossing too far over into the blatant melodramatic. Film dynamics and audience interest are also enhance by eschewing long, slow takes and with the actor(s)/actress(es) who are in frame and facing the camera always the ones delivering the lines. No "back acting" in this movie. But what would become the director's other trademarks are already in play including: static camera placements (the camera seems to be just sitting there waiting for something (anything!) to happen); laundry lines; trains; and ugly overhead power lines. Opening credits are shot against a burlap backdrop as are all future films from this director. There are many memorable scenes including one of an actress casually strolling along the top of the curved rail of a train track in 3-4 inch high platform sandals! Intertitles seem okay (but others who read Japanese symbols better than I may disagree) and are just the right lengths. Restoration is quite good--the film looks much younger than it really is. However, all credits and titles exhibit frame jitters, some wear-related artifacts were ignored, and dark (and fade to dark) scenes often show age-related deterioration. The piano score was especially composed for this DVD, and is excellent. Highly recommended. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

I watched the DVD with the piano score, which I recommend. The film is about a traveling acting troupe who go to a village in Japan. Kihachi (a great Takeshi Sakamoto) has lover in this town, as well as a college age son, who doesn't know Kihachi is his father. Kihachi's present mistress Otaka sends younger member Otoki (the pretty Yoshiko Tsubouchi) to spend time with the boy, as an act of revenge after hearing of Kihachi's lover and son. I have seen the remake first and will again after this, but this version plays out perfectly. Its actually not much different, the main differences being the kind of locale (the remake is in a seaside village), this is silent and it is in black and white. I think you'll care about these characters. The great Ozu's approach is his patented simplicity in design and mood. The movie is mostly dramatic with the odd comic touch. Buy the double DVD and watch both versions. I think you'll find both very worthwhile.

Early silent film from acclaimed Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, "A Story of Floating Weeds" is an ostensibly simple tale of the head of an itinerant troupe of Kabuki players reconnecting with his teenage son Shinkichi (Koji Mitsui). The boy, who had been told that his father was a civil servant who had died, is a student 'with prospects' and the father does not want him to know of his humble origins. As he says to one of the female players in his troupe "My son belongs to a better world than yours", which of course, is the same world as his. Although the focus of the story is on the 'master' and his secret family, there are a number of entertaining scenes featuring the troupe as they are stuck in the town with their performances rained out, broke and bored, which much of the gentle humour coming at the expense of Tomi-boh (Tomio Aoki), the little boy with the errant bladder who plays a dog in the troupe's show. I watched an English-subtitled Criterion Edition on TCM and my only criticism is that the piano score seemed (IMO) too 'Western' for the setting (but I have no idea what the original music was like). The film is a slow-moving but poignant and beautifully filmed taste of pre-WW2 Japanese life. Later audiences would have found Shinkichi's mother's statement that he'll soon be old enough for the draft much more foreboding than Ozu could have intended. Remade by the same director as "Floating Weeds" in 1959.

The strong story and interesting relationships between characters overcome a slow pace and some of the issues I have with Ozu's style, and I have to say, this one stuck with me so I rounded up. There is a harmony to the framing of many of Ozu's shots, but he relies too much on his signature low camera angle, which too often doesn't work as well, at least for me (and I know I'm in the minority, apologies Ozu fans). There is real sass to the female characters Otaka and Otoki, but I wasn't wild about the main character hitting them multiple times, and I also smiled over the weak acting in response to it (holding the hand to the face, and yes, shot from kneecap level).

On the other hand, the film finishes strong, including a very touching scene between father and son, mediated by the mother who tells the young man "Just be a great man. That's all he wants. Since you were born, he's been coming here with that one hope in mind." It goes directly to the heart of all parents. The parallel between father and son, with both of them having a charm about them, attracted to actresses, and casting their lines together in a fishing scene, has a symmetry too it, made poignant by his distance over the years, and the train running off into the night at the end. There is real emotional power here.

Story of Floating Weeds, The (1934)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

A traveling actor returns to a town where his his old flame lives, which causes complications with his current girlfriend and the son who doesn't know he's the father. This was my first film by Yasujiro Ozu and I'm really not sure the reputation this one has over the remake but this here really didn't work for me. The story never fully grabbed my attention and I must say that some of the dialogue was pretty lame, although I've heard some Japanese words don't translate very well to English so perhaps this had something to do with it. The visual style of the film is really the only thing that kept me awake. The stark photography and lush blacks really look terrific and the simple direction also works well.

Admittedly, this is the first film I've seen of Ozu, but I definitely get a sense that this wasn't a great place to start. It was pretty good but I could almost feel Ozu's slower, more contemplative style really straining to come out.

It's a melodrama about a traveling actor and his son, who thinks he (the actor) is his (the son's) uncle. When "Uncle" comes to visit with his struggling acting troupe, the 20-year-old son falls in love with one of the actresses under the uncle, which causes a lot of drama as actors are very low class in the Japanese society of the time and the father left his son specifically to keep him away from such a low-class situation (at least that's what he says... his motivations may be a bit different).

The key thing at work in this film is definitely craft. Ozu obviously has a very specific, strong craft to the way he organizes things. Yet still this film is rather straining against it's cuts, so to speak, and even if I haven't seen it, I'd imagine Ozu's own remake "Floating Weeds" is better as it's probably more contemplative and presents the dialog-rich story in sound.

I'm not saying this is a bad film in any rate, I'm just saying that I can tell from watching it that Ozu can do better.

--PolarisDiB

For a movie released in 1934, it is very odd that this is a silent film. While I love Japanese cinema and have seen many, many movies from this country, this is about the oldest one I have seen and couldn't understand it being silent. Perhaps they were just VERY far behind in switching to "talkies"--although even in Europe, Sound movies were pretty much the norm by about 1931 or so.

Apart from this odd feature of the film, I found it to be almost a carbon copy of the remake of this film that the director made 25 years later. In fact, they were so similar, I really didn't find it all that necessary to have seen both. This, combined with the better technical merits, make the remake a better viewing experience for the average viewer--though film historians and cinephiles will probably be interested in both versions. Fortunately, the Criterion release includes BOTH versions! What a deal! The story is a melancholy tale of an itinerant actor who owns a troop of small-time actors. After many years, he returns to a small town where his illegitimate son lives with his birth mother. The boy, now nearly a full-grown man, thinks that the actor is his uncle--a ruse that has been perpetuated all his life. While I could discuss this central relationship further and discuss the twists and turns the plot takes, it would be best you see it for yourself. It is a rewarding and sad tale that involves regrets, responsibility and "what might have been"--just the sort of movie that makes you think and doesn't give easy answers. An excellent film well worth seeing.

I have not yet seen the acclaimed remake, but this film does not compare to other Ozu silents such as 'Woman of Tokyo' or the masterpiece with similar, "boy, grow up to be a better man than your father" themes - 'I was Born, But'.

The best scenes here are when the emotional heart of the scene is hinted at, rather than spoken abruptly. For instance, when we first learn the boy is the son of this man and woman, it is learned without being said - and the emotional weight of the scene is less in learning the fact, than in the way these two characters react to it without ever speaking of it directly. Unfortunately the film more often goes for high melodrama than this subtle approach, which feeling too staged, left me feeling oddly unaffected.

That being said Ozu does manage to create an enticing mood in parts and it is well acted.