The greatest film of all time

要約

The 1953 masterpiece Tokyo Story, by director Yasujiro Ozu, was voted the greatest film of all time by 358 directors around the world, in a poll released in early August by Sight and Sound magazine.
The publication, by the British Film Institute, rated the late Ozu’s classic story of family, loss and change over other films from better-known directors like Federico Fellini, Orson Welles, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick to make the film’s claim to first place.
A related poll of 846 movie distributors, critics and academics, also placed Ozu’s 1949 classic, Late Spring, in the top 50 films of all time, along with Akira Kurosawa’s 1954 Seven Samurai and 1950 Rashomon, as well as director Kenji Mizoguchi’s 1953 Ugetsu Monogatari.
Japan’s capture of several of the best film rankings will come as no surprise to fans of Japanese cinema. What makes the status especially impressive, though, is that those films are all set deeply in Japanese culture and history.
During his lifetime, Ozu, who lived from 1903 to 1963, completed nearly 50 films, many of them masterpieces. He developed a distinct style that contrasted with classic Hollywood technique.
Observing the small details of daily life with a calm focus on the emotions that drive characters, and make them confused and conflicted, he showed characters honestly, with all their strengths and weaknesses.
Ozu’s directing style is often described as minimalistic, but in fact, his films are rich in beautiful details, carefully constructed scenes and close-ups of faces that let viewers witness the internal feelings of characters.
His films speak a different cinematic language from most modern films, whose chase scenes, special effects and violence fill DVD players and computer screens these days.
Whether one loves the artistry of his cinematic technique, the power of his stories or the timeless human themes he conveys, Ozu’s films rank as a world-class cultural achievement.

日本語の抄訳はウィークリ9月8日号のP18に掲載されています。