This is another interesting film from the Japanese director Yasujirô Ozu. While he was extremely masterful at telling stories about ordinary people--often in a conflict between the modern and traditional worlds. Many consider him to be an extraordinary genius, though I also felt that perhaps he was locked into an inflexible pattern that persisted through his film. The Ozu style meant a camera that did not budge and was usually set near floor level. This means that when the characters moved, the camera cut to a new frame--it did not follow them. And, the stories, though marvelous, were very, very similar. In fact, I would say that Ozu's films are the most consistent in theme and style of any director I can think of--and I've reviewed a ton of films. Because of this, the movies often tend to blend together in your mind. In light of all this, I liked "The Only Son" because it was a bit different. While its style and camera-work were pure Ozu, the story was a bit different. Most of his stories seemed to either be about the elderly and alienation or about marriage, this one is a bit different--though it's still a very personal story of ordinary folks.

The film begins in rural Japan. A young boy desperately wants to continue his education beyond primary school, but his mother is a poor widow. Yet, she is determined to work her butt off and send him to a good school in Tokyo--thereby guarateeing him a great future.

Years pass. The boy is now a man with a wife and baby. He is a school teacher and is quite embarrassed when his mother comes to the big city to see him after many years. Why is he embarrassed? He thinks that his job as a teacher is lowly and he should have achieved more with his life. Whether or not his mother agrees with this is never 100% certain--but what eventually does become certain is that she does not respect him because he sees himself as a failure and is too accepting of this. What happens next provides a nice look into what it really means to be a success.

Overall, an exceptionally good Ozu film. It's a bit different in tone than his later films of the 50s and early 60s and makes for nice viewing--even if you feel you've seen too many similar Ozu films. Well worth seeing--with the typical fine acting and direction you'd expect. The only serious negative, and you cannot blame the filmmakers for this, is that the print is pretty bad starting about one hour into the movie.

Of all the major directors in the world, Ozu was the last one to convert to sound; "The Only Son" was his first "all-talkie" film (in 1936),and it is remarkably inventive (technically) as well as deeply moving. Once again, his film deals with family dynamics: in this case, a widowed mother who has worked selflessly to provide her son with an education. But when she goes to visit him, she finds that he has not fulfilled his promise: he's stuck in a mediocre job, he has a wife and child and can't make any drastic changes because of his responsibilities. The ways that the mother and son try to reach an understanding, and their mutual resignation to the disappointments of life, create a glancing but powerful sense of that "quiet desperation" which was so often Ozu's theme.

In 1923, in the province of Shinshu, the widow and simple worker of a silk factory Tsune Nonomiya (O-Tsune) decides to send her only son to Tokyo for having a better education. Thirteen years later, she visits her son Ryosuke Nonomiya (Shinichi Himori),and finds that he is a poor and frustrated night-school teacher with a wife, Sugiko (Yoshiko Tsubouchi),and a baby boy.

"Hitori Musuko" is a poignant, heartbreaking, sensitive and beautiful movie about expectations, frustrations, revelations and hope in life. Once again the major concern of Ozu is with the family and human relationship. In "Hitori Musuko", Ozu brilliantly uses the sound, recent in 1936, in the end of the simple but touching story, when the machines in the factory stop working symbolizing the death of Tsune. I saw this movie in a Brazilian cable television in a copy that certainly needs restoration, and I regret to inform that only "Ohayô" has been released on DVD in Brazil. Only in festivals, and occasionally in cable television, Brazilians have the chance to see the work of this great director. Seeing the number of votes of this masterpiece in IMDb (only 88 votes),I believe that the distribution problem of this film might be international. My vote is ten.

Title (Brazil): "Filho Único" ("Only Son")