Synopsis
After the death of her husband, an elderly woman and her youngest, unmarried daughter are forced to sell their house to cover his debts and decide to move in with one of the former's children, each of whom is scarcely happy to accommodate.
Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family
1941 ‘戸田家の兄妹’ Directed by Yasujirō Ozu
Cast
Hideo Fujino Fumiko Katsuragi Mitsuko Yoshikawa Tatsuo Saitō Kuniko Miyake Shin Saburi Yoshiko Tsubouchi Toshiaki Konoe Mieko Takamine Michiko Kuwano Reikichi Kawamura Chōko Iida Masao Hayama Mayuko Takagi Fumiko Okamura Chishū Ryū Takeshi Sakamoto Seiji Nishimura Reikō Tani Masami Morikawa Kinuko Wakamizu Setsuko Shinobu Kuniko Igawa Chiyoko Fumiya Eiko Okamoto Yaeko Izumo Haruo Takeda Isamu Yamaguchi
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Alternative Titles
Todake no kyodai, Дети семьи Тода, Братья и сёстры семьи Тода, Fratelli e sorelle della famiglia Toda, A Toda testvérek, Les Frères et Sœurs Toda, 户田家的兄妹, Todake no Kyodai, Брат и сестра Тода, 도다가의 형제자매들, Hermanos y hermanas de la familia Toda
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Theatrical
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Japan
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Japan
01 Mar 1941
- Theatrical
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Cinematic Time Capsule
1941 Marathon - Film #17”No one is to blame,
it’s just they are too different in many ways.”Everything’s relative… and these relatives suck!
I felt bad for the mother and daughter, but I felt WAY WORSE for that poor mockingbird!
"This bird, it won’t be ignored anymore”
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To commemorate the birthday of the patriarch of the Toda family, all of the members of this high-class Japanese family gather to celebrate by posing for a photograph. A few days later they must face the unexpected death of the father, who has also left them with a considerable debt that will bring great changes. The most affected are the mother and the youngest daughter not yet married, who will have to try to live together and deal with the rather ungracious treatment of their extended family.
In Toda-ke no kyōdai, Ozu unravels the family dynamics that change unexpectedly due to a great rupture, to the loss of that link that kept everything together and in apparent harmony. In addition…
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"Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family" was a somewhat "minor" master Ozu work but still a very worthwhile movie, IMO.
The plot, or more specifically, the narrative felt a bit unbalanced to me. The movie takes a bit to establish itself during the (significant) early going, which I felt was a less accomplished part of the movie. When things seem to stabilize, the movie really gets a lot stronger, IMO.
All good in the acting, which was quite solid across the board. I would definitely single out Mieko Takamine, who was really great in her performance, as well as Shin Saburi in a smaller but quite noteworthy role.
Shooting was very Ozu-like (just ask the bird :D), which means…
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Even the great Yasujirô Ozu struggles to find true inspiration during war times. Here with a cold family drama which is neither depressing, warm or inspiring. I mean, it's fine and the actors and the director are professionals making sure there is some level of quality, but there is very little sparks this time from the master.
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I love it when a film can start mid-story and provide no recaps of events thus far yet still manage to draw its audience in. I guess this was Ozu’s stock in trade, and here he begins the drama with a well-to-do family gathering (celebrating the father’s birthday), after which point, we’re naturally orientated in terms of who the characters are and how they interconnect.
Sadly, the mother’s husband dies soon after the event, from complications brought on by undiagnosed heart disease (which is widely blamed on him having rather too much fondness for saké!). This leaves his widowed wife and youngest daughter Setsuko (Mieko Takamine) with a dilemma. It’s expected the mother (played by Ayako Katsuragi) will live at…
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Fascinating as a kind of rough draft for Tokyo Story. Ozu cited this was one of his first attempts at cutting "drama" out of his movies, while still inspiring emotion in his viewer. And for large stretches it does exactly that, following the small humiliations suffered by a widow and her daughter as they're shuttled between family members' homes.
But the penultimate scene is unimaginable in a fully functional Ozu film, wherein the best son lectures his siblings for their shabby behavior during a big family meal. The melodrama of the contrivance contrasted with the minutiae that makes up most of the film makes it seem all the more absurd.
And that's not even mentioning the fact that the paradise…
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When a formidable patriarch with loaded assets unexpectedly dies, leaving his petty, mercenary children at the helm of a ruinous pot of gold, hidden fissures and ruptures begin to sever the family unit while exposing the price of modernity. This is Ozu's KNIVES OUT (2019). Not as funny, but the critique of upper-class privilege shares a similar context. The story recalls a previous Ozu film, A MOTHER SHOULD BE LOVED (1934), another tale that examines how the death of a father threatens to destroy the family system. In both films, the loss of paternal authority has immense ramifications for the children left behind, especially as it relates to their devotion to their family.
Bordwell states: "According to the prewar family…
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The Only Son found Ozu boldly striking into the talkie era with an innate mastery of off-screen sound to deepen the sense of suffocating constriction around its characters, but here we see him achieve something similar with pointed silence. Some of the camerawork and timing here feels the most like late Ozu of any of his films to this point; shots that wildly shift in angle and orientation are made contrapuntal by some crucial linking element that helps to triangulate, say, the spacious Toda villa, and Ozu increasingly pushes his penchant for using objects as visual motifs to the foreground to help keep straight a considerably large cast of inter-related characters.
Nominally espousing views in line with wartime moral codes,…
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“my family’s been on the receiving end of orders. your family’s been on the giving end. there’s a huge gap between the two. you and i were born different. it’s a tremendous difference. is it okay for you to suddenly pretend to be the same as me?”
proto-tokyo story. the tragedy of loss and responsibility getting in the way of living // the privilege to move on by abdicating those responsibilities. as always, visually striking.
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Os Irmãos e Irmãs Toda estreava há 80 anos no Japão.
Esse filme soa como uma espécie de elo perdido entre o Rei Lear shakespeariano e o Era uma Vez em Tóquio, embora bom, falta a presença da Setsuko Hara, como já disse, não consigo gostar tanto dos filmes do Ozu em que ela não esteja presente.
No Youtube ( youtu.be/5f4Chp10Vms ) -
This wartime Ozu is him at his weakest. There is a core premise of a large family dealing with the aftermath of the sudden death of a patriarch; however, the fallout of this doesn’t really work. There are too many competing perspectives and an exhausting focus on everyday banalities.
To be honest, I found it very hard to stay engaged. There’s a flatness you the film and the available restored print has pervasive sound issues.
It’s technically better than a lot of Ozu’s silent output but those films felt constrained, or at least were trying things that were more novel (and their earliness makes them more charming even in their failings). This is a competent retread that sinks by comparison to an excellent wider filmography.