In the 30s, a low middle-class family composed of the father (Tatsuo Saito), the mother (Mitsuko Yoshikawa) and two little sons (Hideo Sugawara and Tomio Aoki) has just moved to a suburb of Tokyo. The two brothers have some sort of adaptation problem with the kids in their neighborhood, but they feel protected with their beloved father, and they become leaders of the gang of boys. Their father is a clerk in an office, and his director lives in the same neighborhood, and he tries to be promoted in his job being a servile flatterer of his boss. One night, the boys find that his father has a silly behavior in his job to please his boss, and they lose the respect for their father, questioning him why he can not be the director of the company.
This is the first movie of Yasujito Ozu that I have watched, since none of his films has been released on video or DVD in Brazil. This month, a Brazilian cable television is presenting four movies of this great director. I was really impressed with such powerful and heartbreaking fight of classes' familiar drama. I was expecting a movie like François Truffault's "Les Quatre Cents Coups", or Luis Buñuel's "Los Olvidados", or Hector Babenco's "Pixote: A Lei do Mais Fraco". However, the story is not focused in juvenile delinquents, but only low-middle class children and the specific drama of a worker's family, when the little boys do not understand the social hierarchy and why their father is not better than the father of one boy of their gang. The performance of the cast is very natural, and the direction is amazing, having an adequate pace and transmitting the sensations and feelings of the characters without sound to the viewers. My vote is ten.
Title (Brazil): "Meninos de Tóquio" ("Boys From Tokyo")
