Early Film Question: Ozu's Father/Ex-Teacher-Figures in "Tokyo Chorus" (1931), and "There Was

[mccaskem at georgetown.edu]

Dear mk,

I have to admit that I may have had an attention gap or two along the way while 
sitting through the film. It did not really rivet my attention all the time, and had 
a hard-to-resist Nembutal-like effect on me at moments. Consequently, I defer 
to you. At the end, though, the old Former Sensei seems to have had enough 
influence with the Min. of Ed. to get them to send the unemployed lead character 
a letter offering him a teaching job in Tochigi somewhere - the happy ending.

The Wiki description seems to tally with what I saw, but as I confess, I may have 
begun to doze now and then along the way, since so little that was dramatic 
seemed to happen over the course of the 90 min.

"Still in need of work a well dressed Okajima tries an Employment agency; which 
has no work for him. He walks away only to bump into his old teacher, Mr. 
Omura (Tatsuo Saito). Omura has quit teaching and now runs a restaurant called 
"The Calorie Café". It mainly serves curry rice. He offers Okajimo a job 'until he 
can find him a good one' which he swears he can. Okajimo insists he'll only take 
the job if it is out of friendship; not pity. He ends up taking the job."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Chorus

If this sensei h a d to resign, as the one in Chichi ariki felt he had to, wouldn't 
that reinforce the resemblance? I have watched Chichi ariki with 100% attention, 
from start to finish, twice, so I know all the ins and outs.

In my opinion, Chichi ariki is a great picture, quite moving in its own way, while 
Tokyo Chorus, as Ozu likely intended, is rather more like comedic entertainment 
with occasional serious undertones/overtones - but many may, and probably 
will, disagree with me strongly.

In any case, I stand corrected.

mmcc