Tokyo Chorus (Music: Whyohwhy)
Tókjó no kórasu / Jasudžiró Ozu / Japan 1931 / 91 min. / 35mm
Tokyo Chorus is sometimes described as ‘a cheerful tragedy’, due to the unexpected combination of rhetorical, narrative, and stylistic techniques employed by Ozu and Noda. They selected just comedic patterns as the means of conveying a story about marriage, unemployment, and self-respect, which did not diminish, but reinforced the socially critical aspects of their film.