Passing Fancy
(Dekigokoro)
Live Musical Accompaniment
Screening on Film
$15 Special Event Tickets
With Sakamoto Takeshi, Tokkan Kozou, Obinata Den.
Japan, 1933, 35mm, black & white, silent, 101 min.
Japanese intertitles with English subtitles.
Print source: Janus Films
Passing Fancy is the first of Ozu’s films about the misadventures of Kihachi, and his second film to win the Kinema Junpo first prize. Sakamoto Takeshi’s Kihachi is extremely careless and given to temper tantrums, though occasionally he beams with the goofy glow of Chaplin’s tramp. In Passing Fancy, Kihachi is a brewery worker who lives in a tenement with his son Tomio (Tokkan Kozou, in his best performance), a bright student bullied for his father’s reputation as a “big idiot.” Despite his particular class status, Kihachi is a prototype for many of Ozu’s patriarchal figures, who expect the love and respect of their children without necessarily expressing any love or respect themselves. When Kihachi falls for a woman (Fushimi Nobuko) who does not return his feelings, the consequences of his drunken negligence awaken a dormant sense of paternal responsibility that exceeds the bare minimum he offered in the past. A continuation of the stylistic maturation apparent in Ozu’s three films from 1933, the restrained Passing Fancy uses only deep focus, close-ups of scattered objects and desolate spaces, and slight movements to invoke an overwhelming feeling of isolation.
Live musical accompaniment by Robert Humphreville.
- Enlarge the image
Japanese benshi Kataoka Ichiro at the HFA. Photo: Navid Haghighi - Enlarge the image
Japanese benshi Kataoka Ichiro at the HFA. Photo: Navid Haghighi - Enlarge the image
Accompanist Robert Humphreville at the HFA. Photo: Navid Haghighi - Enlarge the image
Japanese benshi Kataoka Ichiro at the HFA. Photo: Navid Haghighi
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Late Spring
Tokyo Story
Early Summer
Passing Fancy
Dragnet Girl
Tokyo Story
A Story of Floating Weeds
Days of Youth
The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice
Early Spring
The Munekata Sisters
Floating Weeds
Good Morning
Late Autumn
Tokyo Twilight
The Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family
I Flunked, But …
Late Autumn
Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?
The End of Summer
Early Spring
Café Lumière
Tokyo Story
