我出生了，但……

English Title: I Was Born, But...
Original Title: Otona no miru ehon - Umarete wa mita keredo
Year: 1932
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Director: Yasujirô Ozu
Writers:
Akira Fushimi
Yasujirô Ozu
Geibei Ibushiya
Music: Donald Sosin
Cinematography: Hideo Shigehara
Cast:
Tomio Aoki
Hideo Sugawara
Tatsuo Saitô
Mitsuko Yoshikawa
Zentaro Iijima
Seiichi Katô
Shôichi Kofujita
Seiji Nishimura
Takeshi Sakamoto
Chishû Ryû
Rating: 7.3/10




This Ozu’s early silent film was made when he was only 29, at a formative age, he has already acquired a keen eye on sieving the callous doctrine of the society’s pecuniary pecking order through the lens of two kids’ growing dismay and perplex.

Two school-age brothers Ryoichi (Sugawara) and Keiji (Aoki) are moving to suburbs with their parents, a shrewd move of their father Yoshi (Saitô, a virtuoso player jostle between primness and clownishness) to hobnob with his boss Iwasaki (Sakamoto). With a good salary, they can afford a better life here, but the boys have some difficulty to find their feet, especially when they are picked on by school bullies, led by a bigger kid (Iijima), they play truant and laze around, ask an older delivery boy (Kofujita) to forge teacher’s signature, all child’s play and they would be reprimanded by Yoshi when the lid is blown off. Nevertheless, Ozu applies a very gentle touch and a ludic attention in limning the boys’ daily expediency to tackle with their problems (there are not enough sparrow’s eggs in the world to beat their bully), and eventually the scale would be tipped when they are wise enough to crack the knack of how to succeed in becoming an alpha dog, even Taro (Katô), Iwasaki’s son, has to pay deference to the boys’ whims. (a children’s game but so rapier-like in its connotation linked to the power struggle in the adult world.)

Then comes a blow, during a friends-gathering in Iwasaki’s place, where films of daily vignettes are screened, a galling discovery would inflame the brothers’ chutzpah to brazenly question their father’s authority, “are you a successful person?”, “why can’t you be successful?”, it is a blow to the brothers’ unwitting but vaunted ego, which certainly doesn’t tally with their young age, and is a corollary of a society spurred and indoctrinated by sheer competition and capitalism, even for kids, they are possessed with the idea of supremacy, power and hubris, which outstrips the parameter of childish mischief. In retrospect, the film grants us a gander into the frame-of-mind of a pre-WWII Japan, but not prescient enough to pinpoint a more perspicacious outlook, instead, an anodyne finale betrays Ozu’s own perspective at that time.

The children in the film are well-trained scamps, endearing to watch, especially Tomio Aoki as the younger brother, transforms the disadvantage of his less photogenic looks into something archly expressive with all the gurning, imitating and feigning, a farceur is in the making. A minor grouch to Donald Sosin’s persistent attendant score, a relentless cascade of tunefulness can certainly overstay its welcome. Anyhow, a lesser comedy branded with Ozu’s name is still worth visiting, not the least for the sake of his masterful tutelage and coordination of his exuberant pupils in front of the camera.

comparison point: Ozu’s EARLY SUMMER (1951) 8.6/10

        侯孝贤在《重新再看小津安二郎》里提到：“我们看的是小津的默片《我出生了，但……》……这是我第一次看小津电影，很喜欢。”《我出生了，但……》是一部小津早期的以孩子、家庭为题材的默片，上映于1932年6月。

       电影以初入城郊担任小职员一家的成人和两个年幼的男孩为主角，以大人与小孩世界各自上演不同的权力游戏为线索，关注城郊小市民的喜怒哀乐。影片选取了男孩大闹、逃课、玩九连环、偷鸟蛋、看电影、与父亲冲突、绝食抗议等故事片段，细腻刻画父子之间、朋友之间、下属与上级之间微妙的人际关系。以生活化的小事透视社会常态，以喜剧的手法影射伤感的悲剧主题。

       在电影拍摄手法上已微微透露出小津电影独一无二的特点：单纯的人物关系与故事情节设置；画面上追求一种明确的古典的形式美；舒缓平和的人物动作；疏离的情景氛围；尚未完全形成的不移动的固定镜头，以及腰位拍摄的平行视角；出神入化的漫无止境的长镜头；以切的方式实现时空转换；背景音乐是清爽明快的钢琴乐加美式管弦乐。如果想研究小津大师在怎样诞生的，从这部作品中似乎就已初见端倪。

       影片中出现的很多意象都十分值得玩味。譬如：那一次次呼啸而过的有轨电车，恰恰象征着这个迅电流光势不可挡的时代。那一件件随风而动的衣衫，恰恰象征着任人摆布不得脱身的人生。那一个九连环游戏恰恰象征着那一个个小圈试图逃出大圈的封锁看似简单实则徒劳。

       影片的很多画面也都值得细细品味。比如：两个男孩愤怒地离开父亲老板家，两个小小的身影隐没在浓浓的夜色当中的画面。还有影片中时时出现的两个男孩与一群男孩对立而形成的疏离与紧密，松紧结合，张弛有度的画面。难怪有人八卦此片的美术与小津有着非同一般的关系了，这样的电影画面简直是一幅幅精巧的写意画，那种淡淡的古典美呼之欲出。

       看上去是很轻很轻的电影画面，描写着一段有一段或幽默或诙谐的生活琐事，撑到结尾却是让人看到很重很重的人生，看到为了生存所必须存在的等级制度与等级制度下弱者的平庸与无奈。那一场精彩的父子争吵的戏让人情不自禁地想到叶圣陶先生那一篇《古代英雄的石像》中石像最终的倒塌，想起孙燕姿在歌里唱过的那一句：是否成人世界的背后总有残缺。

       永远的安详，永远的深藏不露，永远的微笑的面孔，永远的骨子里的深沉，永远的一脉相承的主题，似乎就是小津安二郎作品共有的特点了，《我出生了，但……》也不例外。

       “斑马是黑底白纹还是白底黑纹？”这样看似无聊的想法，据说都是小孩子儿童时期经常冒出来的想法，可是我现在还是会常常冒出这样的想法来，怪不得母上大人说我是逆生长了。我今天冒出的想法是：如果申办冬奥会的城市那一年没有下雪怎么办？越想越上火，可真是愁死人了。

——————不负责任的分割线——————
这是一部高端大气上档次的电影作品，虽不适合哈哈党，但诚意推荐，包你看过不会后悔。

——I was born, but…

Ozu’s movie I Was Born, But... is an undoubted hilarious silent comedy. But speaking of the dark side, Ozu mentioned in an interview:“I started to make a film about children and ended up with a film about grown-ups…”. Movie through a comparison of the hierarchies of the adult world and the hierarchies of the children's world presents both the humor of everyday life and the sad realities of life.
As David Bordwell said, “The film is built around the social use of power.” This film explores the ways the world works. For adults, the determiner is financial, and the social classes. For children, the determiner is physical strength, sparrow eggs, and their father. Ozu reveals us a harsh reality：Not only in the adult's world but also in the children word, that these principles underlie social hierarchies, and the social fabric are the systems in which we must compromise.
   A common misreading by the Western audiences believed this movie is accused the hypocritical in the adult world. In the one hand, “Ozu demonstrates human encounters without judgment. Ouz’s observation of family life and its social decline are respectful.” On the other hands, in this movie, is hard to say children characters are pure innocent. They have their own priorities, different the grownups, children's simply measured by strength. They already live under the rules, just hadn’t understood the unjust hierarchical social customs of the real world yet. The boys define they have the best father during the kids’ arguments. But in the home movies, they saw a different light about their father. Who seem is not an important “somebody” they had worshiped, but as a “nobody” who has to fawn on Taro's father.
       Paternal authority always is an important part in the Asian cultures. “Japanese father was the head of the traditional family system” Without this background, it maybe a little confused for the Western audience how the boys' shifting attitude towards their father. At first, he is an exemplary hero. After the home movies, he is an embarrassing fool. Also, their father realizes he was disappointing his sons. He was so despair, even want dependency on alcohol to numb his sorrow.
      Frame is also an important method to narrative.“Ozu's objects are almost never divorced from narrative or thematic functions in his films.” An obvious symbol such as in this scene Ozu captures father’s sadness through the classic “tatami shot”. When father told mother he didn’t cozy up the boss because he enjoys it, audiences begin to empathies with his shame and panic. Is he hypocrisy? Maybe, but we couldn’t blame him.
“In most Ozu films the structure presumes this "return” and it is this which makes the final reels of these pictures so compelling.” Ozu reproduced a particular scene which the father and the boys walking together in the ending of the movie. They met Taro and father's boss; father struggled about whether or not to greet his boss, the younger brother said, “You’d better say good morning to him.” It’s a similar scene as the earlier at the beginning of the movie. But this time they establish a mutual understanding relationship.
The movie’s final scene is the most perfecting ending I can imagine. The brother admitted Taro’s father is better. Seem the conversation between father and sons made the boys realize what is the reality. In the children world, it takes more strength to accept your dad is better than my dad. After that, the boys began to “cast” on Taro. Everything seems same as before. They were grown up，but still preserving that childish aspect.
When I was watching I was born, but… I feel both of comedy and pathos. Is it comedy? Or, is it tragedy? It seems hard to simply definition. Just like Wim Wenders said, through Ozu’s movies we’ve been seeing all families in the whole word, we see our parents, our brothers and ourselves.

Reference
 David Bordwell, Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema
 Wim Wenders, Mary Zournaz, Inventing Peace: A Dialogue on Perception
 M.E. Lamb, 2003, The role of the father in child development (4th Ed.)
 Kathe Geist, Narrative Style in Ozu's Silent Films
 Donald Richie, Yasujiro Ozu: The Syntax of His Films