Record of a Tenement Gentleman

dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 72 minutes, in Japanese with English subtitles, 1947, presented on 16mm film

Yasujiro Ozu’s first post–World War II film takes place in an impoverished Toyko neighborhood that has been partly destroyed in bombing raids. Here, a hardhearted middle-aged widow reluctantly takes in child abandoned by his father; eventually the two of them warm to each other. Ozu’s delicate, humorous, and unsentimental story of redemption is the director’s expression of a country slowly coming out of the dark.