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6.11.10

It's no coincidence that this film is masterpiece


Ozu not only drunk more than perhaps any other major film director, he saw in this habit the source of his artistic strenght.

Usually Ozu's comments in the diary that he and [his co-writer] Noda (and anyone else who happened to be there) kept were confined to poetical remarks about the weather (in the most arcane of kanji) and an accounting of how much of which kind of alcoohol he had drunk that day (he preferred scotch, but he also drank sake and relatively inexpensive Japanese whiskeys). In an entry of July 7, 1959, however, written in elegant imitation of classical forms, he observed, "If the number of cups you drink be small, there can be no masterpiece; the masterpiece arises from the number of brimming cups you quaff." He descends from these heights in the following line: "It's no coincidence that this film [Floating Weeds] is masterpiece - just look in the kitchen at the row of empty bottles".

Ozu, Donald Richie

2 comments:

Álvaro Martins said...

Isto faz-me lembrar o Vinicius e o Jobim :) Mas no Ozu, quem conhece os filmes dele, sabe bem que isto não podia ser mais verdadeiro, deve haver poucos cineastas que tenham filmado tantas "conversas de café", tantos "encontros" com o saké (como diz o Donald Richie) e principalmente com o whisky.

Unknown said...

É verdade. O Ozu é um cineasta muito cá de casa, como diria o JBC.