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Fighting Friends

1929

和製喧嘩友達

The remaining fragments of an early Ozu film. It is the simple story of two friends who live together in a poor tenement and who share about everything in life (food, hopes, work...). Everything goes well until they gallantly rescue a young (and pretty) woman injured in a road accident. Since the lady has nowhere to go, the two good-hearted friends invite her to their home. She soon becomes their housemaid and they soon begin to seek her favors. Alas, she falls for a young student she has met in the neighborhood, much to the two friends' dismay.

Atsushi Watanabe Hisao Yoshitani Eiko Takamatsu Ichiro Yuki Ichirō Okuni Tomoko Naniwa Nobuko Wakaba

Alternative Titles

Amigos de combate, Amigos en la lucha, Unidos en la pelea, Amis de combat, Rissa fra amici in stile giapponese, Rivais à japonesa, Wasei kenka tomodachi, 日式欢喜冤家, Japán módra küzdő barátok, Дерущиеся друзья, Combats amicaux à la japonaise, 일본식 싸움 친구

Genre

Comedy

Theatrical

05 Jul 1929

Japan

Japan

05 Jul 1929

Theatrical

14 mins More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Stephen Gillespie 5

Welcome to Juno's Flavours of Ozu. An Ozu season created by one of Letterboxd's best members.

Another unfinished Ozu. This is a restored slice of a wider film. It, however, is sensical though very slight. There is little to recommend it, inherently, but it's worthwhile for the Ozu completist in your life.
Review by BrandonHabes ★½ 4

This could very well be a sequel to DAYS OF YOUTH (1929). The buddy-rivalry pattern, the elusive love interest, the western-styled male fellowship. It's all there, though not nearly as humorous. More weird than anything—two friends knock a girl down with a truck then take her home and try to seduce her, only for her to runaway with someone else?
Ozu is still leaning on the American template, at the same time casting foreshadows of one of his favorite allusions: marriage represented as a train trip adventure (we'll see this again in THERE WAS A FATHER (1942) and LATE AUTUMN (1960)). A comedy that never quite lands like the first.

Ozu Ranked
Review by Lencho of the Apes

Fragmentary early Ozu. Surprising amount of plein-air photography and vrooming motion (cars, trains...)
Review by Rafay ★★★

hahaha 😂
Review by Jim Film ★★★

So while I can understand spoken Japanese I unfortunately am not adept at reading it however I enjoyed what I understood if you want to watch this rare film you can watch it here I uploaded it so it doesn't become lost like a lot of Ozu's films. archive.org/details/fighting-friends-1929
Review by Jake Cole

Other Ozu fragments tell something close to a complete story, with some faring better than others, but this one is really impossible to judge with what's remaining. What still exists has moments of Chaplinesque humor, especially in the first few minutes establishing the main characters' impoverished conditions with a miserable, poisonous meal that recalls the cabin "dinner" in The Gold Rush. The rest just feels like a retread of the plot of Days of Youth, and you can't tell from what's remaining whether Ozu might have taken the premise into some different directions.
Review by BrunoLD ★★★½

Yasujiro Ozu Films Ranked
English/Spanish Review:
The planning is very curious to be Ozu, full of moving shots inside cars or trains, as well as very interesting shots (and more taking into account its year) that simulate film frames with the edges of the windows of a train while the camera follows a van. Similar to what is seen in Krzysztof Kieslowski's 'Camera Buff' when Filip Mosz traveling by train discovers he is unable to see the real world without visualizing it as a film camera.
The truth is that in terms of editing and planning it has an American style, always with Ozu's touch but not yet printed his characteristic style to all the footage.
Very good short film,…
Review by Mathieu Chevalier ★★½

Classement: Yasujirō Ozu
Intéressant pour voir Ozu expérimenter avec sa caméra à bord de voitures et trains en mouvement, comme chez Buster Keaton et dans Speedy! Sinon, c'est pratiquement la même histoire que dans Days of Youth, deux amis qui se disputent la même femme, avec le même dénouement ironique. C'est joué gros, on appuie davantage sur le slapstick.
C'est un peu injuste d'attribuer une note à un fragment de film, mais ça va me gosser si je laisse ça vide. Je réviserai si on retrouve le reste... Héhé.
Review by Craig J. Clark

As meet-cutes go, knocking a girl down with your truck and then taking her home and making her your servant has to be one of the weirdest.
Review by Bopp ★★

The worst Ozu film - short or otherwise - that I've seen, not that it's necessarily bad because frankly I'm not sure he was ever capable of such, but certainly not very good due to the obviously missing pieces; this is merely a fragment of a longer film, one that doesn't function like a short the same way his others do. I'm not sure there are any actual scenes to speak of, only some gags that never actually become proper set pieces. That it still exists is reason enough to watch it, but mostly worthwhile for the handful of images towards the end that are so unequivocally, quintessential Ozu. You can watch it here.
Yasujirō Ozu
Review by timberwolves fan ★★½

this is a tiny fragment of a much larger thing and i couldn’t find a copy with english subtitles (it wasn’t too big an issue since it’s mostly based around physical comedy but you’re still missing something ofc) so it’s hard to tell what this is supposed to be exactly. but it looks an awful lot like days of youth done up in the vein of chaplin as opposed to lloyd to me. could be wrong, tho; there really isn’t much to go on and it only vaguely resembles a functional short film (the other ozu fragments come much closer to working this way imo). all of which is to say it’s ozu’s worst film by default...and it still ain’t…
Review by Decoupage ★

Two guys run a girl over with their truck, then take her home to be their girlfriend. Pretty weird. Understandable she runs away and marries the first next guy she meets.

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Fighting Friends

和製喧嘩友達

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Alternative Titles

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Releases by Date

Theatrical

05 Jul 1929

Releases by Country

Japan

05 Jul 1929

Popular reviews

Where to watch

Fighting Friends

和製喧嘩友達

Synopsis

Cast

Director Director

Writer Writer

Cinematography Cinematography

Studio

Country

Language

Alternative Titles

Genre

Theatrical

05 Jul 1929

Japan

05 Jul 1929

Popular reviews

Director

Writer

Cinematography