Reviews of silent film releases on home video.
Copyright © 1999-2024 by Carl Bennett
and the Silent Era Company.
All Rights Reserved. |
A Story of
Floating Weeds
(1934) |
The most successful film of director Yasujirô Ozu’s silent filmmaking career, perhaps of his entire career, is a multilayered tale of class division, aspiration and regret. Reputedly inspired by The Barker (1928), A Story of Floating Weeds (1934) explores the lowly-world of a troupe of traveling actors headed by a patriarchal Thespian, a supposed star of the Japanese stage, who returns to a small village to perform and to visit old friends.
A beautiful film that is full of warmth, humor and emotion. Beautifully composed, beautifully lit and photographed; this is a film that was clearly created by a master filmmaker.
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 The Criterion Collection
2004 DVD edition
Floating Weeds (1959), color, 119 minutes, not rated,
with A Story of Floating Weeds (1934), black & white, 86 minutes, not rated.
The Criterion Collection, FLO060, collection number 232,
UPC 0-37429-18192-8, ISBN 0-78002-705-1.
Two single-sided, dual-layered, Region 1 NTSC DVD discs, 1.33:1 aspect ratio image in full-frame 4:3 (720 x 480 pixels) interlaced scan MPEG-2 format, SDR (standard dynamic range), 7.5 Mbps average video bit rate, 448 Kbps audio bit rate, Dolby Digital 48 kHz 5.0 surround sound and Dolby Digital 48 kHz 1.0 mono sound, Japanese language intertitles, English language subtitles, 15 chapter stops; standard DVD keepcase; $39.95.
Release date: 20 April 2004.
Country of origin: USA
Ratings (1-10): video: 9 / audio: 9 / additional content: 9 / overall: 9. |
This DVD edition has been transferred in high-definition from a 35mm fine-grain master positive of excellent quality, with some footage transferred from another 35mm print of very-good quality. The main source print features a broad range of greytones, with controlled and detailed highlights and shadows, and excellent image detail. The secondary print is grainier and a bit contrasty, but this source print is utilized to replace only a few minutes of missing or damaged footage. An automatic digital clean-up has performed on the transfer to remove dust, speckling, scratches and other flaws. Some major flaws remain that presumably would have been impossible to remove without creating artifacts or would have been too costly to remove. The resulting HD video master is superb and allows the viewer to enjoy Ozu’s film without many distracting flaws.
The film is accompanied by an optional piano score composed and performed by Donald Sosin on a MIDI keyboard that later controlled a MIDI-driven piano in the recording studio. The film is also presented with optional audio commentary by Donald Richie.
The supplemental material includes Osu’s color remake Floating Weeds (1959) in a gorgeous digital restoration, a booklet with notes on the films by Donald Richie and notes on the edition production, audio commentary on the 1959 film by Roger Ebert, and a Japanese trailer for the film.
We highly recommend this edition of Ozu’s wonderful film, which could only be topped by the release of a Blu-ray Disc edition from Criterion.
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