is a 1959 Japanese comedy film co-written and directed by

Yasujirō Ozu was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. He began his career during the era of silent films, and his last films were made in colour in the early 1960s. Ozu first made a number of short comedies, before turning to more serious themes in t ...

. It is a loose remake of his own 1932

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when ...

'' I Was Born, But...'', and is Ozu's second film in color.

Plot

The film takes place in suburban Tokyo, and begins with a group of boy students going home. The film steers into a subplot concerning the local women's club monthly dues. Everyone in the neighborhood club believes that Mrs Hayashi, the treasurer, has given the dues to the chairwoman, Mrs Haraguchi, but Mrs Haraguchi denies it. They gossip amongst themselves who could have taken the money, and speculate that Mrs Haraguchi could have used the money to buy for herself a new

washing machine A washing machine (laundry machine, clothes washer, washer, or simply wash) is a home appliance used to wash laundry. The term is mostly applied to machines that use water as opposed to dry cleaning (which uses alternative cleaning fluids and ...

. Later Mrs Haraguchi confronts Mrs Hayashi for starting the rumor and ruining her reputation, but Mrs Hayashi states that she ''has'' indeed handed the dues money to Haraguchi's mother. Only later does Mrs Haraguchi realize it was her mistake (her mother being quite senile and forgetful), and she goes to apologize. The boys are all attracted to a neighbor's house because they have a

television set A television set or television receiver, more commonly called the television, TV, TV set, telly, tele, or tube, is a device that combines a tuner, display, and loudspeakers, for the purpose of viewing and hearing television broadcasts, or using ...

, where they can watch their favorite

sumo wrestling is a form of competitive full-contact wrestling where a ''rikishi'' (wrestler) attempts to force his opponent out of a circular ring (''dohyō'') or into touching the ground with any body part other than the soles of his feet (usually by thr ...

matches. (At the time of the film's release in Japan, the medium was rapidly gaining popularity.) However, their conservative parents forbid them to visit their bohemian neighbors because the wife is thought to be a

cabaret Cabaret is a form of theatrical entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. The performance venue might be a pub, a casino, a hotel, a restaurant, or a nightclub with a stage for performances. The audience, often dining or d ...

singer. As a result of this, the young boys of the Hayashi family, Minoru and Isamu, pressure their mother to buy them a television set, but their mother refuses. When their father learns of it, he asks the boys to keep quiet when they kick a tantrum. Minoru throws an anger fit, and states that adults always engage in pointless niceties like "good morning" and refuse to say exactly what they mean. Back in their room, Minoru and Isamu decide on a silence strike against all adults. The first neighbor to bear the brunt of this snub is Mrs Haraguchi. Mrs Haraguchi, angered by this snub, speculates it is Mrs Hayashi who instigates this in revenge over their earlier misunderstanding, and tells this to busybody Mrs. Tomizawa. Soon, everybody thinks Mrs Hayashi is a petty, vengeful person, and are all queueing up to return their loaned items to her. Minoru and Isamu continue their strike in school, and even against their English tutor. Finally, their schoolteacher visits to find the root of their silence. The two boys run off from home with a pot of rice due to hunger, but are caught by a passing policeman. They disappear for hours into the evening, until their English tutor finds them outside a station watching television. At the end of the film, the boys find out their parents have indeed purchased a television set to support a neighbour in his new job as a salesman. Jubilant, they stop their strike at once. Their English tutor and their aunt appear to be starting a fresh romance.

Cast

Keiji Sada is the stage name for a Japanese cinema actor active from the late-1940s to the early 1960s. His real name was Kanichi Nakai. He won the award for best actor at the 7th Blue Ribbon Awards for and . He was the father of the actor Kiichi Nakai an ...

as Heiichiro Fukui *

Yoshiko Kuga is a Japanese people, Japanese actress. Biography and personal life Kuga was born in Tokyo, Japan. Her father, , was a marquis and a member of the House of Peers (Japan), House of Peers. In 1946, while still attending Gakushuin Junior High Sc ...

as Setsuko Arita *

Chishū Ryū was a Japanese actor who, in a career lasting 65 years, appeared in over 160 films and about 70 television productions. Early life Ryū was born in Tamamizu Village, Tamana County, a rural area of Kumamoto Prefecture in Kyushu, the most south ...

as Keitaro Hayashi *

Kuniko Miyake was a Japanese actress. She appeared in nearly 200 films between 1934 and 1991. Career After graduating from Kuki High School, Miyake joined the Shochiku film studios in 1934 and made her film debut the same year with ''Yume no sasayaki''. She ...

as Tamiko Hayashi *

Haruko Sugimura was a Japanese stage and film actress, best known for her appearances in the films of Yasujirō Ozu and Mikio Naruse from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. Biography Sugimura was born in Nishi-ku, Hiroshima. After the death of her parents, ...

as Kikue Haraguchi * Shitara Koji as Minoru Hayashi * Masahiko Shimazu as Isamu Hayashi * Kyoko Izumi as Midori Maruyama *

Taiji Tonoyama was a Japanese character actor who made many appearances in films and on television from 1939 to 1989. He was a close friend of Kaneto Shindo and one of his regular cast members. He was also an essayist. In 1950 he helped form the film company Ki ...

as the door-to-door salesman

Style

Despite Ozu's reputation in the West as an austere and refined director, ''Good Morning'' does not shy away from depicting many of the neighborhood boys'

flatulence Flatulence, in humans, is the expulsion of gas from the intestines via the anus, commonly referred to as farting. "Flatus" is the medical word for gas generated in the stomach or bowels. A proportion of intestinal gas may be swallowed environm ...

jokes.

Reception

''Good Morning'' has an 88% approval rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

Richard Brody Richard Brody (born 1958) is an American film critic who has written for ''The New Yorker'' since 1999. Education Brody grew up in Roslyn, New York, and attended Princeton University, receiving a B.A. in comparative literature in 1980. He first ...

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

wrote about the film "Yasujiro Ozu’s poised images convey a bitterly ironic, scathingly radical rejection of Japanese codes of self-restraint and silence."

Jonathan Rosenbaum Jonathan Rosenbaum (born February 27, 1943) is an American film critic and author. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for ''The Chicago Reader'' from 1987 to 2008, when he retired. He has published and edited numerous books about cinema and has ...

Chicago Reader The ''Chicago Reader'', or ''Reader'' (stylized as ЯEADER), is an American alternative weekly newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. It was founded by a ...

praised the film describing it as "Perhaps the most delightful of Yasujiro Ozu's late comedies". In 2009 the film was ranked at No. 36 on the list of the ''Greatest Japanese Films of All Time'' by Japanese film magazine

kinema Junpo , commonly called , is Japan's oldest film magazine and began publication in July 1919. It was first published three times a month, using the Japanese ''Jun'' (旬) system of dividing months into three parts, but the postwar ''Kinema Junpō'' ha ...

Home media

In 2011, the BFI released a Region 2 Dual Format Edition (Blu-ray + DVD). Included with this release is a standard definition presentation of '' I Was Born, But...''. In 2017, Criterion re-released ''Good Morning'' in a Region 1 Blu-ray. The film received a 4k digital restoration for this release and is packaged alongside '' I Was Born, But...'' and a fragment of ''A Straightforward Boy''.

References

External links

* *
''Good Morning''
an essay by

Rick Prelinger Rick Prelinger is an archivist, professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz; writer and filmmaker, and founder of the Prelinger Archives, a collection of 60,000 advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur films acquired by th ...

at the

Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...

DVD review of Good Morning
*

{{Yasujirō Ozu 1959 films 1959 comedy-drama films 1950s Japanese-language films Japanese comedy-drama films Remakes of Japanese films Sound film remakes of silent films Films directed by Yasujirō Ozu Films with screenplays by Yasujirō Ozu Films with screenplays by Kogo Noda Shochiku films 1959 comedy films 1959 drama films 1950s Japanese films