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Friday, May 7, 2004
8:40pm
A Mother Should Be Loved
(Haha o kowazuya). The first and last reels of this very rare film are lost; in this print, the missing reels are briefly explained in intertitles. Ozu's own father died during the making of the film, which opens with the death of a beloved father of two boys. Eight years later, the college student Sadao learns that he was actually the son of his father's first wife. Ozu explores the complexities of sibling relationships in this story about half-brothers and their different relationships to the woman they call mother. He also delves into what would become a favorite subject of the postwar films-the dissolution of the family and the importance of place (the family moves three times). Ozu's signature motif of set design-Western movie posters-here significantly includes the French film Poil de carotte, about the sadness of an unloved child.
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