List Price: $39.95You Pay Only: $22.99 You Save: $16.96 (42%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9780780027657
Format: Black & White, Color, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Subtitled, NTSC
ISBN: 0780027655
Label: Criterion
Manufacturer: Criterion
Number Of Items: 2
Publisher: Criterion
Region Code: 1
Release Date: October 28, 2003
Running Time: 136 minutes
Sales Rank: 7126
Studio: Criterion
Theatrical Release Date: 1953
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Editorial Review:
Description:
Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story (Tokyo Monogatari) follows an aging couple, Tomi and Sukichi, on their journey from their rural village to visit their two married children in bustling, post-war Tokyo. Their reception, however, is disappointing: too busy to entertain them, their children send them off to a health spa. After Tomi falls ill, she and Sukichi return home, while the children, grief-stricken, hasten to be with her. From a simple tale unfolds one of the greatest of all Japanese films. Starring Ozu regulars Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara, the film reprises one of the director's favorite themes—that of generational conflict—in a way that is quintessentially Japanese and yet so universal in its appeal that it continues to resonate as one of cinema’s greatest masterpieces.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Gift for someone who has yet to view the DVD
I bought this for one of the wedding gifts for my nephew and his new Japanese bride, but they are honeymooning and have not yet viewed it. It did arrive, presumably in good condition. I gave it a neutral (***) because I have no idea of the condition or time of delivery. It was a fair price.
Rating:  - Masterpiece
There are many roads to greatness. This is a notion that I have always held to be true. No greater example of this could be given than by comparing the films of two of the greatest filmmakers from Japan. Of course, most people have heard of Akira Kurosawa and his classics like Seven Samurai, Rashomon, and Ikiru. But there is also Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963), whose canon of films is set in modern times far more often than Kurosawa's. Where Kurosawa was grand, Ozu is small. Where Kurosawa was kinetic, Ozu was static. Where Kurosawa celebrated the epic, Ozu celebrated the ordinary. Yet, despite their differences, their greatest films are indisputable masterpieces of cinema, even if they achieve their ends in seemingly contradictory ways.
Perhaps the greatest of all Ozu films is his 1953 black and white classic Tokyo Story (Tokyo monogatari), which follows a simple story outline, unfolds very slowly - the film is two hours and fifteen minutes long, builds its power through the slow accumulation of facts, and the deft, but subtle revelation of character. In short, it's everything that Hollywood films are not, and it would never have been produced there, then or now. It has been derided as being stale, dull, and plodding, even as it has alternately been chided as melodramatic and a third rate soap opera. Such definitions only go to show how little the claimants know of the words they wield.
It is true, that nothing much of `excitement' happens in the film- no murders, car chases, explosions, ... Read More
Rating: - First Kindness, Then Justice
"Be kind to your parents while they are alive. Filial piety does not extend beyond the grave."
-Buddhist Proverb
"Sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child."
-Wm. Shakespeare "King Lear"
An elderly couple from the country visit their adult children in the big city and are treated with rudeness and dismissiveness. The spouses of their children are noticably much kinder and more compassionate. Sometimes, it is easier to be nice to people you hardly know and have no history with than people you have known all your life. The vacation is a disappointment and because of this the aftermath is that much sadder and more poignant.
Ozu's masterpiece is a slow, meditative examination of the mixed feelings of relationships and the contradictory nature of human personalities. The overall theme of Ozu's mature work is the understanding that life is inevitably sad and disappointing. There are happinesses but nothing really works out and lonliness and regret are pervasive. Children disappoint their parents by not living up to expectations either personally or professionally. Children are disappointed by their all-too-human imperfect parents.
Through his signature tatami-level camerawork and his meticulous no-frills sets, camerawork and direction, Ozu's explorations of life are deceptively simple. By paring filmmaking down to the bare essentials, he allows the characters to develop and reveal themselves ... Read More
Rating: - Yosujiro Ozu' masterpiece
First at all, I should remark this is a milestone film in the history of cinema, and according the British Film Institute one of the five greatest films ever made.
The poetic intensity of this overpowering movie transcends by far any egregious epithet. A deeply, poignant and touching drama about an elderly couple who travels to Tokyo, where they are unenthusiastically received by his children.
But it's such the narrative power and the unforgettable shots along this masterpiece, that you will be engaged from start to finish.
I politely invite you to acquire this memorable masterwork, and once you have watched you will necessarily include among the milestone films ever seen through your existence.
The cast, the emotive and tender scenes ( the grandmother and her unworried grandson picking up flowers, is a true landmark sequence) , the multiple issues around a new generation with lack of personality, enthusiasm permeated by an absolute indifference, is just a part of this artful script, whose nostalgic gaze about an emerging Tokyo from the ashes of the WW2 will spell you.
An immortal masterpiece and one of my top twenty films ever made.
Rating: - One of the best films ever made.
Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)
It says something-- though I'm not sure what-- about my culture that IMDB's "if you liked this you'll like..." recommendations for Tokyo Monogatari include The Grudge and Spider-Man 2. Whatever it says, I'm pretty sure it's not good. For Tokyo Monogatari is an entirely different film, not in the same genre-- not even in the same ballpark, or for that matter the same zip code-- as those movies. Perhaps not even the same planet. Action? Terror? Attractive if vapid soul-searching protagonist? Escapism? Hardly.
Tokyo Monogatari is the story of an elderly rural couple (Chishu Ryu and Cheiko Higashiyama) who go to visit their children in Tokyo. Their children have no time for them and, with the awkwardness into which everyone is spun by the parents' arrival, ship them off to the hot springs. While they are there, the wife takes ill, and the couple return home; in a reversal of the original premise, the second act has the children rushing to the couple's rural home, berating themselves and each other over their not making time for their parents.
This is an exceptionally slow film, and that is not helped by the fact that there are parts of it that are quite uncomfortable to watch-- not because they tread on delicate subject matter or anything like that, but because Ozu and Noda's script recreates the kind of quotidian dialogue one hears in real life in vivid detail. Note that I'm not talking about the sort of brilliant rapidfire banter that one gets ... Read More
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