Tokyo monogatari (Tokyo Story). 1953. Japan. Directed by Yasujirō Ozu. Screenplay by Kogo Noda, Yasujirō Ozu. With Chishu Ryu, Chieko Higahiyama, Setsuko Hara. 35mm print courtesy Janus Films. Japanese with English subtitles.. 136 min.
Tokyo Story, Yasujirō Ozu’s profoundly bittersweet drama about an elderly provincial couple visiting their grown children, is now widely considered one of the greatest films ever made. But it took decades for the film to reach the United States. Donald Richie, an authority on Japanese cinema who was then a film curator at MoMA, showed the Talbots the film in 1969; in his memoir A Life at the Movies, Talbot wrote, “We were knocked out by this simple story; black and white: camera three free off the ground, like someone seated on a tatami mat and barely moving; short on plot, long on wisdom.” Two decades after it was made, Tokyo Story had its long overdue New York theatrical premiere at the New Yorker Theater in 1972. “Now each year on a Sunday, Toby and I screen it alone in our theater as a kind of ritual.” The Talbots’ company, New Yorker Films, distributed a dozen of Ozu’s films to repertory theaters and college film series around the country.