All Movie Guide

This 1959 Ozu production centers on the likable but fallible leader of an itinerant acting troupe ("floating weeds" being the Japanese name for such groups), Kimajuro, played brilliantly by Ganjiro Nakamura. The film opens on a lazy, stagnant river as the troupe lays spread about on a boat deck drifting downstream. It's obvious that they're a ragged bunch as they sit fanning themselves and smoking on deck. The boat pulls into a quiet fishing village where the troupe proceeds to canvass the town, hanging up posters and performing impromptu stunts for the inhabitants. Kimajuro and his actress mistress, Sumiko (Machiko Kyo), head to the theatre and secure their cramped quarters above the theatre's main hall. Kimajuro leaves to pay a visit to a local saki bar owned by Oyoshi (Haruko Sugimura), who, years previous, had conceived a child with Kimajuro. The child has grown into a strapping young man, Kiyoshi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi), who has a good job at the post office. Kimajuro, although clearly proud of his son, has refused to take responsibility for the child and Kiyoshi thinks Kimajuro is merely his uncle. Unbeknownst to Kimajuro, Sumiko has discovered his secret, and, infuriated, hires a young actress to seduce Kiyoshi. Terrified that his son is falling for this woman of loose morals, Kimajuro has to decide what's most important: keeping his secret safe or saving his son by acknowledging his paternity. ~ Brian Whitener, All Movie Guide

All Movie Guide

Story of Floating Weeds, Ozu's silent film inspired by The Barker, a much inferior American film on a similar theme, might seem to inevitably be swamped by sentimentality, given the plot outline. But the director's genius adroitly avoids any hint of mawkishness by grounding the film in the most mundane details of daily life as he fashions one of the most powerfully moving works of his early career. The pleasure taken by the actor in a moment of peace for a cigarette, water dropping through the roof of the rickety theater into bowls, the horny supporting actors of the troupe always on the make -- these and dozens of other carefully observed fragments of the ebb and flow of the quotidian, shot in the director's characteristically understated visual style, emphasize his belief that everything his eye falls upon has value and meaning. Yet the most transient expression of the human face never escapes him -- one has only to see the bitter disappointment of the twice-abandoned "wife." Michael Costello

Product Details

• UPC: 037429181928
• Source: CRITERION
• Region Code: 1
• Aspect Ratio: Pre-1954 Standard (1.33.1)
• Presentation: B&W
• Sound: Dolby Digital Mono
• Language: Japanese
• Subtitles: English
• Time: 3:25:00
• Sales Rank: 5,830

This set contains DVDs which may be available separately:

• The Floating Weeds
• Ukigusa Monogatari

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