Tokyo Story

(Tokyo monogatari)

featuring

Chishu Ryu, Chieko Higashiyama, So Yamamura, Haruko Sugimura,

Setsuko Hara anchors one of the greatest of all Japanese films with one of the greatest of all performances, as a warm-hearted, becalmed, yet utterly determined young woman. Tokyo Story is about the gap between generations in a Japanese family. It tells a simple, sad story of an elderly couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their two married children, only to find themselves politely ushered off to a hot springs resort. There, the mother dies, leaving only their widowed daughter-in-law (Hara) to care for the father. “Two generations, a simple story that allows all the characters to change places, a pervading delineation of high summer, and the deceptive simplicity of the film’s style—all these combine to create a picture so Japanese and at the same time so personal, and hence so universal in its appeal, that it becomes a masterpiece” (Donald Richie).

FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Yasujiro Ozu
  • Kogo Noda
Cinematographer
  • Yuharu Atsuta
Language
  • Japanese
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 35mm
  • 140 mins
Source
  • Janus Films/Criterion Collection