A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of intergenerational relationships, Good Morning tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his child protagonists. Shot in stunning color and set in a suburb of Tokyo where housewives gossip about the neighbors’ new washing machine and unemployed husbands look for work as door-to-door salesmen, this charming comedy refashions Ozu’s own silent classic I Was Born, But . . . to gently satirize consumerism in postwar Japan.
Stars: Keiji Sada, Yoshiko Kuga, Chishū Ryū, Kuniko Miyake, Haruko Sugimura, Kôji Shitara
Crew: Tatsuo Hamada (Production Design), Yoshisaburo Seno (Sound Director), Yoshiyasu Hamamura (Editor), Toshirō Mayuzumi (Original Music Composer), Yasujirō Ozu (Director), Shizuo Yamanouchi (Producer)
Country: Japan
Language: 日本語
Studio: Shochiku
Runtime: 94 minutes
Quality: HD
Released: May 12, 1959
IMDb: 3.293
Keywords:japan, parent child relationship, brotherhood, protest, inflation, consumerism, gossip, noisy neighbor, post war japan, neighborhood, criterion, japanese family, door to door salesman, family dynamics, mischievous children, town gossip, television set, boys, small talk, missing money, silence, child outsmarts adult, generational divide, farting
