A mother looks over at her pouting young sonalr

Record of a Tenement Gentleman
(Nagaya shinshiroku)

Screening on Film
Directed by Ozu Yasujiro.
With Ryu Chishu, Iida Choko, Sakamoto Takeshi.
Japan, 1947, 35mm, black & white, 72 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.
Print source: HFA

After his return from a POW camp near Singapore in 1946, Ozu immediately reentered the studio system and wrote the script for Record of a Tenement Gentleman in twelve days. Although the film was not especially well-received, and Ozu admitted to being tired and rushed while making it, there is a profound purity to its lack of polish. Encouraged by her neighbors (including Sakamoto Takeshi's Kihachi), childless widow Otane (Iida Choko) reluctantly takes in Kohei (Aoki Hohi), a boy whose father has disappeared following the bombing of their house. Otane finds the boy irritating and burdensome, but over time the two form a special relationship—a bond that stands out among Ozu’s many depictions of relatives linked by blood or marriage. Ozu does not hide that Otane’s trajectory from unkind stranger to selfless caregiver is intended to stir feelings of hope among an Occupation-era audience. But the sensitivity of Iida Choko’s performance as Otane and Aoki Hohi’s timidity as Kohei elevates Record of a Tenement Gentleman several stories above the flatness of a postwar parable.

ORDER TICKETS - JUNE 24

ORDER TICKETS - JULY 8

Part of film series

Read more

Ozu 120: The Complete Ozu Yasujiro

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Música de Câmara. The Cinema of Rita Azevedo Gomes

Read more

From the Harvard Film Archive Collection …

Read more

People and their Virtue. Two Films by Wang Bing

Read more

Trenque Lauquen by Laura Citarella

Read more

I Heard It Through the Grapevine with James Baldwin

Read more

Filmmaker, Guest Worker: Zelimir Zilnik’s Expatriates

Read more

Adachi Masao’s Revolution+1

Read more

Out of the Ashes – The US-ROK Security Alliance & the Emergence of South Korean Cinema

Read more

Songs of Love and Loss. Elvira Notari’s Cinematic Realism