About/Contact Archives Twitter

Cinema Ozu (19): Kihachi the Impulsive (in Passing Fancy)

Takeshi Sakamoto as Ozu creation "Kihachi"

Feature #28:
Passing Fancy / Dekigokoro
(1933)
Status: fully preserved and readily available on DVD
Script: fully preserved
Prints: original negative and multiple prints survive
Region1 DVD: Criterion's Eclipse Series 10, Silent Ozu (Amazon link / Criterion Store link)

In Passing Fancy, Ozu introduced Kihachi (Takeshi Sakamoto), one of his most indelible characters. Kihachi would appear thrice more: in A Story of Floating Weeds, An Innocent Maid, and An Inn in Tokyo. In his subsequent iterations, Kihachi is somewhat similar to Chaplin's Little Tramp or Cantinflas in that his fundamental nature is common between the films. He's irresponsible, unreliable, and not a terribly big success at much of anything for long. The stark difference between Sakamoto and Chaplin is that whereas the Tramp is often very sympathetic, Kihachi is more often than not an indefensible bastard. We love watching him regardless.

Kihachi the First is a single father who works as a day laborer. His son Tomio is played by bad-ass menace Tokkan Kozo (aka Tomio Aoki), who begins the movie with an eyepatch that disappears eventually. Kihachi's buddy Jiro (Den Ohikata) helps him raise the kid. Stumbling around drunk one night, Kihachi comes across a pretty young woman named Harue (Nobuko Fushimi). She is destitute and homeless. Kihachi is immediately smitten, and he convinces cafe owner Otome (Choko Iida) to take the young girl in for the night, with Kihachi's reputation as collateral.

Den Ohikata as Jiro

Tomio, as portrayed by "Tokkan kozo", is much more intelligent and pragmatic than his father. As much of a bratty kid as he may be, he's more sophisticated than his aged father.

Jiro rebuffs Harue's overtures of attraction while Kihachi continues to nurse delusions of true love. Kihachi remarks early on that she reminds him of one of his ex-lovers. The fondly-remembered flame could be son Tomio's mother or someone else, but here we start to wonder what on earth happened to that woman in particular. Did she die? Did she abandon them? Is Tomio even his kid? Kihachi's level of indifference toward Tomio makes you wonder.

Tokkan Kozo's trademark "nyah nyah" pose

When Kihachi gives the kid "50 sen" to do with as he pleases, Tomio spends it all on candy. Tomio becomes gravely ill, and is mere inches from death. His dear old dad can't seem to be bothered to care. While all this is going on, Kihachi learns both that Harue isn't interested in her "Uncle" in a romantic way, and that Jiro probably does have feelings for her. The reason that Jiro resists acting on those feelings is that he's too good a friend to abandon the clearly needy Kihachi and son. All of these tangential jumps make translating the title as "Impulse" seem more accurate (as Bordwell argues). I'd go a bit further and interpret it as "Gut Feeling" or "Going With Your Gut", but hey, what do I know?

I wonder if Tomio's eyepatch that disappears suddenly is a result of unseen, neglectful parenting. I wonder whether Otome the cafe lady will ever succeed in capturing Kihachi's attention. The movie makes me wonder these things as well as dozens of other "what if?" scenarios. That's what it does so well: provoke one's imagination about mundane life. Like I Was Born, But..., Passing Fancy is easily one of the most accessible titles in Ozu's entire filmography.

After finally watching all three of them, it's very easy to recommend buying Eclipse Series 10 rather than Netflixing or streaming the titles that it includes. All of them are worth owning and revisiting: this one, I Was Born, But..., and Tokyo Chorus. Each of them has more going for it than merely historical, academic value. If one has some sort of blockage against silent film in general, then they'd be advised to get over it. Some of the best films in existence have intertitles, just as some of them also have subtitles. Yet others feature both.

We'll talk about star collaborator Takeshi Sakamoto more in a future Appendix article, but I should mention a couple of his appearances in earlier Ozu silents that are relevant here. Of the survivors, his most prominent role was in I Was Born, But.... Sakamoto was the company President whose ass had to be kissed. Sakamoto earlier worked opposite his Passing Fancy co-star "Tokkan Kozo" in the film of the same name, where he played the crime boss who was utterly tormented by Kozo. I didn't catch that when watching the surviving clips a few weeks ago.

Nobuko Fushimi as Harue, bland even for an ingenue

For the sake of reference, I should mention that another "pretty young woman" named Harue appeared previously in Woman of Tokyo (as played by Kinuyo Tanaka). We'll see some more character names recycled in the next few Ozu films, often played by the same actor each time. Nobuko Fushimi, who plays Harue here, never appears in another Ozu film. Her acting career ended in 1939 for some reason unknown to me.

Next up is the most awkward case of a salvaged Ozu film. Not mere chunks here and there are gone, but the entire beginning and ending are nowhere to be found. After that, we go on a three-film Kihachi binge that'll be briefly interrupted by Ozu's only non-fiction film.

Cinema Ozu is a limited-run series of articles about the career and impact of Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. My primary intent is to chronicle my own journey through his films, a fair number of which I have seen, but even more of which I have not. The most essential research tools I have used are David Bordwell's book Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema and definitive Ozu fansite "Ozu-san".

The series is also timed to celebrate the July 2010 U.S. release of The Only Son and There Was a Father as a DVD double-set by The Criterion Collection. You can find all entries in Cinema Ozu here. New to the series? It's best to start from the beginning.