Yasujiro Ozu began making films for Shochiku Studios in the late twenties, directing several gangster pictures quite unlike the family dramas that made him famous later in his career. (As Wim Wenders has noted Ozu made the same film or several films over and over again in the late forties and through to his last picture in 1963 -- the moves are all, more or less alike, and all good.) He was late to adopt sound, making silent pictures until 1936. Where now are the dreams of youth, released in 1932, is thought to be transitional -- it begins as a genre film, a college comedy, and, then, turns into something, much darker and more disturbing. Ozu has no real interest in violence and his later films don't even have any quarrels or contentious dialogue in them -- conflict is shown by averted eyes, disapproving glances, and uncomfortable silences. Where now are the dreams of youth, by contrast, is shockingly violent -- there is an extended scene at the film's climax that is almost too terrible to watch. The light tone that prevails in the first half of the film has turned into something literally much darker -- the penultimate scene is staged on a dark road and shot so that it is difficult to see: perhaps, this strategy was adopted to soften the scene's violence, but it doesn't have that effect -- the crepuscular setting, like something out of Waiting for Godot, if anything makes thing more disturbing.
The movie begins as a campus comedy, influenced by American films, primarily, it seems, Harold Lloyd pictures. Four friends are studying economics at "P" university -- they all wear sweaters marked with this initial. We see a strange pep rally underway, depicted by tracking shots at tatami (that is, sitting) level that show the students engaged in grotesque gyrations. An absent-minded student reads an economics book while wandering around campus -- this is Mr. Seiki, the hardest-working of all students on campus but to no avail because his professor says that he has "the mind of a thirteen-year old". There's a fat kid, who is the campus clown, and a boy with a pompadour. The fourth student is Tetsuo Hironi, the scion of a wealthy trading family. Tetsuo, who is wealthy is the leader of the group. He is courted by Shige, the barmaid at the Blue Hawaii Bakery -- it looks to me to be a beer joint. Shige clearly likes Tetsuo and we see him mending a tear in his tee-shirt. There's a big poster for Hell's Angels, the 1930 aviation film directed by Howard Hugh's on the wall of Blue Hawaii -- at other crucial scenes, American movie posters engage in an ironic commentary on the film 's action. The boys play a few pranks and, then, we see them sitting for an exam in economics -- all of them are cheating in one way or another, something that the film shows without disapproval, and, even, it seems with some enthusiasm. In the middle of the exam, Tetsuo is called home. His father has collapsed from a stroke and he must now run the family business with his brother, a pompous stuffed-shirt. (The brother makes a long speech to employees on the arrival of the young man at the business -- Tetsuo simply says: "I'll be counting on you all like pops did.") A subplot, typical of Ozu's later concerns, involves efforts of the brother to find a suitable mate for Tetsuo -- the priggish brother doesn't approve of Shige, the barmaid. A blind date is set up with a westernized society girl who announces that "a man's reckless ways are irresistable particularly when he is drunk" and that "(Tetsuo's) deranged character excites me." But, when Tetsuo shows up, indeed, very drunk and uses the flapper's purse for an ash-tray she flees him in disgust. (Tetsuo has been drinking with his elderly uncle, a typical Ozu reprobate, who is half-naked, wears a wet cloth on his head against the heat, drinks like a fish and smokes as well -- Ozu was, apparently, a working alcoholic himself and his scenes showing people getting drunk have merry, brilliantly observed resonance.) After a year working at the family business, Tetsuo goes back to the campus and helps his three friends finally pass their economics test, with more cheating of the kind the picture seems to endorse-- Tetsuo has got the answers from obsequious professor and simply slipped them to his buddies. After his friends finally graduate, Tetsuo hires them to work in his company, hoping to maintain the old sense of college camaraderie although he is now their employer. On another catastrophic date set up by his brother, Tetsuo sees his old girlfriend Shige who is moving to a new apartment. He is happy to encounter her and, in fact, loads up his limousine with her humble property, in effect, walling off the flapper that he is supposed to be courting (she flees). At her new apartment, Tetsuo is assisting her with unpacking when the hapless Mr. Seiki appears, carrying a bouquet of flowers. He has been wooing Shige and she has, in fact, agreed to marry him. Tetsuo takes his buddies out for a drink in Ginza and announces that he intends to marry Shige -- Mr. Seiki is smitten by the news but holds his tongue. He has become financially dependent on Tetsuo and, in fact, is supporting his elderly mother with money from the job at Hironi enterprises -- in fact, Mr. Seiki's mother gives Tetsuo a little gift and tells him that she prays to him "like a god." It takes Tetsuo a while to figure out that Shige and the very retiring and humble Mr. Seiki are engaged. He confronts Shige who tells him that she has agreed to marry Mr. Seiki because "no one else wants him" and loves him out of pity. (This seems a peculiar motivation for a marriage but it is accepted by everyone in the film as completely rational and, even, admirable.) Shige says that Tetsuo didn't contact her for a year and she grew tired waiting for him, although she admits that she loved him earlier. Tetsuo is now enraged. He invites his three friends to another drinking party in Ginza and, then, as they walk home through a strange, dark wasteland, he confronts Mr. Seiki. He says that Mr.Seiki has been acting like a "puppy" and not a man and that he has disgraced their friendship by not fighting for Shige. Tetsuo tries to provoke Mr. Seiki into a fight by slapping him, but he refuses to raise a hand. Then, Tetsuo says that he will show him the "fists of friendship" and begins punching him violently in the side of the face and head. Mr. Seiki just stands there and Tetsuo goes on punching with full force for what seems like an eternity until the man falls to his knees. Tetsuo announces that he will not marry Shige and pulls the battered Mr. Seiki up to his feet. All of this takes place in a dark barren landscape in the middle of what looks like a gravel road. In the final scene, it is bright and sunny -- Tetsuo and two of his friends are throwing around a baseball on top of a skyscraper. We see a train in which Mr. Seiki and Shige are sitting. They are going on their honeymoon. The landscapes shoot past. On the rooftop, Tetsuo and his buddies see the train and wave to it. (It's pretty clear that they are too far away to actually see anyone on the train.) As the train passes the skyscraper, Mr. Seiki and Shige wave as well -- although the cutting is discontinuous and we don't have any sense that either of the two parties can see one another: the waving is purely symbolic, showing that affinity between friends remains notwithstanding distance.
Like many of Ozu's films, the picture starts in such an unassuming and elliptical way so that nothing much seems to be happening. Then, all of a sudden a plot is visible and we come to care deeply about the characters; the acting in this movie is naturalistic and impeccable. The movie is wholly successful and very ingenious -- the subplot involving Tetsuo's romantic adventures fits very neatly into the larger narrative. In his later movies, Ozu almost never moves the camera -- here, he uses, at least, a dozen showy tracking shots, generally motivated as the vantage from a moving car or train. These shots are very effective and suggest that if Ozu had followed his early interest in the moving camera he would have become a master of that effect, somewhat like Max Ophuls. There are none of his signature "empty frames", that is, still life images charged with narrative force in that they show the absence of a character. But he does use still life close-ups and there is a particularly impressive scene showing the men leaving the Ginza bar that is cut with a vehement cubist-style force: we see feet, bottles, everything jumbled together in a collage of a dozen or so shots punctuating the film as the men leave and walk with the camera tracking beside them to the climactic confrontation. Where now are the dreams of youth is an excellent movie, although the viewer needs to be patient -- the mild campus comedy, although important as a contrast to the dark tone later in the film, isn't particularly engaging, at least, at first. TCM, showing the film as part of its Silent Sunday Nights series presented a reasonably clear version of the film, but wholly without musical soundtrack -- I believe that Japanese silent films were narrated by professionals who described the action and, then, read the titles, imitating the various characters with their voices. These film-narrators, so-called Benshi, allow Japanese pictures to be more elliptical and indirect in their narrative practices, since the Benshi could be counted on to explain the action and the relationships between the characters. But no musical score was commissioned for these silent films. Accordingly, Ozu's picture was shown without an accompaniment -- this is also an obstacle to enjoying a movie of this sort.
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