I hadn’t previously realized, however, that when Ozu made “Floating Weeds,” he was doing a remake of his own earlier silent film titled “A Story of Floating Weeds” (1934). The Criterion Collection DVD release is actually a two-disc set that has the 1934 version on Disc One and the 1959 remake on Disc Two. The silent version also has an optional feature-length audio commentary, this one by Japanese film expert Donald Richie.
The story is the same in both movies: A company of traveling players comes to a backwater town, where the head of the troupe renews a long-dormant relationship with two locals, a former lover and her young adult son. The young man believes the actor to be his uncle, although they are biologically father and son. But the actor’s actions provoke the troupe’s leading lady since she and he have been lovers for the last few years. She pays a young actress to seduce the actor’s son, leading to a crisis that forces all five major characters to make important decisions.
Ozu is famous for his shot compositions, but I was astonished at the many exquisite color shots in the DVD version of the 1959 “Floating Weeds,” which must have been well-preserved. The quality of the sound, which was left in the original monaural on the DVD, is generally good throughout. Two of the five major roles are played by actresses I recognized: Machiko Kyo, who portrayed the woman who was raped in “Rashomon,” and Haruko Sugimura, who played the hairdresser daughter in “Tokyo Story.”
The DVD picture quality for “A Story of Floating Weeds” is relatively good for a 1934 film, and I suppose it’s to be expected that it’s less than pristine. The movie was a silent, and there has never been a standard musical accompaniment for it, but the DVD provides an optional piano score composed by Donald Sosin and recorded in 2004. Sosin’s music is somewhat in the style of Schumann, and I recommend turning it on while watching the film.
“Floating Weeds” and “A Story of Floating Weeds” have the same narrative structure, but to my way of thinking, they play rather differently. The 1959 color talkie is more beautiful than the 1934 black-and-white silent, but the older film is arguably more emotionally powerful. The newer movie is 33 minutes longer and feels to me more leisurely and digressive, but with a stronger sense of setting. At the end of the silent film, I felt profound sorrow, while at the end of the later color movie, my feeling was closer to resignation. Donald Richie has suggested that the two films differ in tone because Ozu was 31 when he made the earlier and 56 when he made the later, and he mellowed as he grew older.
Another difference between the two movies is of course the casts, although Ozu honors the tradition of having at least one major actor from an earlier film appear in its remake. Koji (Hideo) Mitsui plays the young adult son in the 1934 silent, then reappears in the 1959 remake as the member of the company of traveling players who, when the troupe gets stranded, steals from the others and vanishes.
If someone told me he was willing to watch only one of the two films in this DVD set, I’d recommend the color talkie “Floating Weeds” because of its beauty. However, for me, the combination of these two great movies was much more meaningful than either one by itself. And the two audio commentary tracks greatly enhanced my experience as well. Donald Richie is a specialist who is familiar with the Japanese language and customs and brings a deep knowledge of Japanese cinema in general and Ozu in particular. Roger Ebert, on the other hand, is a polymath who has built up a wide-ranging knowledge of thousands of films of all kinds over the past few decades, and he is able to help us understand how “Floating Weeds” fits into the grand scheme of things.
If you’ve seen and liked any Ozu film, I think you’ll want to buy the two-disc DVD set containing “A Story of Floating Weeds” and “Floating Weeds.” If you’re not familiar with the great Japanese filmmaker’s work, this pair of films and the informative commentary tracks will make an excellent introduction.
I have listed the DVD details of the two-disc set on the next page.
