This presentation analyzes material differences in Ozu Yasujiro's late silent films in order to reveal the different aesthetic projects that they embodied, within the overarching mode of the “Kamata-style” melodrama. Ozu's consciousness of form extends beyond camera level and the construction of space recognized by prior authors to the signifying power of the intertitle as a form of “visual speech.” In the presentation, Raine will provide an historical context for Ozu’s engagement with the intertitle and then survey his changing usage, in particular in the late silent films from Woman of Tokyo (Tokyo no onna, 1933) to College is a Nice Place (Daigaku yoi toko, 1936, lost). He argues that we can tease out a succession of aesthetic projects in these films: first, an exploration of the properties of intertitle syntax and frequency in the films of 1933 and then a heretofore unrecognized exploitation of the “sound version” (films with music and sometimes sound effects and speech, but no synchronized dialog) to silence the bathos of benshi narration and create subtle, synaesthetic effects that we might liken to visual repartee.

Michael Raine is an Assistant Professor at the film studies department of Western University, Canada. He received his Ph.D. in film studies from the University of Iowa and has taught Japanese Cinema and World Cinema at Yale University and the University of Chicago. He has published on a wide range of topics in Japanese cinema and has subtitled approximately 60 films for classes, commercial release, and the Udine film festival. His research interests lie in the transition to sound in Japanese cinema, wartime image culture, and the Japanese new wave.