LGM Film Club, Part 408: Tokyo Chorus

I stopped my LGM Film Club series when I took a break from the site in August. Been meaning to bring it back, but haven’t. Here’s a good excuse to get it started again. I was watching Yasujiro Ozu’s 1931 film Tokyo Chorus the other night. It’s amazing that any Japanese silents survived the war and that it is from the master Ozu makes this film all the more special. It’s a kind of combination of a Great Depression story/comedy/salesman story. The deep humanism in Ozu’s heart is already clear and so is his style, even if both would become more sophisticated over the years. But I did want to note that Herbert Hoover was so universally unpopular in 1931 that you could put a reference to him in the title cards of a Japanese film and everyone knew who you were talking about.

I guess I didn’t quite realize just how internationally famous Hoover sucking was.