Days of Youth (1929)

Days of Youth is the earliest film by Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu to survive, though in fact he had made a number of silent films in the two years before this was released. As he worked his way up to becoming a director at the Shochiku film studios, he found himself responsible for producing the studios' 'student comedy' films, which featured no big-name actors, and were modelled on similar movies being made in Hollywood and playing to enthusiastic audiences in Japan. This resulted in a very productive period in which he made 26 films in the 5 year period from 1927-32. Of these, only 8 survive in complete form. Though he would make his most critically successful work in the 1950s with films such as Tokyo Story and Early Summer, it's always interesting to look at a director's early work for signs and references that they would return to in later work, and though Ozu was turning these films around at a frenetic pace, it's encouraging to see that the quality doesn't generally suffer.

The storyline in Days of Youth is simple, and it's a very easy film to watch. Two university students are vying with each other for the affections of a girl, Chieko (Junko Matsui). One of them, the arrogant Bin Watanabe, is not very likable, and we see in the first scene how he advertises for a lodger to take a room in his house, but turns away potential tenants in the hope that a beautiful girl might apply. He eventually tricks the polite Chieko into taking the room. The other student is the shy and studious Shuichi Yamamoto (played by Tatsuo Saito, who would become a staple of many Ozu films of this period), who suffers the taunts and pranks of Watanabe as he too tries to woo Chieko. The second part of the film is the best as the trio go on a skiing holiday and the bulk of the comedy stems from Watanabe's cruelty to Yamamoto, such as sending the hapless student's ski sliding down the hill.
It's quickly evident watching the film nowadays that Ozu was hugely influenced at this stage of his career by the slapstick comedy films from America, but most noticeably he owes a large debt to Harold Lloyd. Ozu devised some instances which certainly would not be out of place in a Lloyd film, but the main problem here concerns the execution, not the planning. Saito could almost be doing an impersonation of Lloyd here, with his thick round glasses and mild-mannered temperament, but the biggest problem is that he evidently lacks the comic timing to get the most humour out of the situations Ozu puts him in. Though scenes such as the one where he accidentally covers his left hand in black paint and then has to try and hide it from Chieko are amusing, they still come across as not quite being able to fulfil their comic potential in a way that Lloyd would have. But it would be harsh to give too much criticism to Ozu just because Days of Youth is far inferior to Lloyd's 1925 comedy The Freshman, which surely Ozu had seen and was heavily influenced by when making this film.

There are a few moments in which it becomes apparent that Days of Youth is an Ozu film, but they are not common. Even at this early stage in his career, and still only 26 years old, he was honing his trademark camerawork, placing the camera at waist height. There's more movement of the camera here than we are used to seeing in Ozu's films, and he even uses a ghost train shot as the students travel up to the snowy mountains. Another surprising moment is in one scene when we see the two students discussing their lack of funds, with a prominent poster in the background for Frank Borzage's 1927 Academy-Award nominated film Seventh Heaven. This becomes part of the plot when Watanabe declares that they can get some money from Seventh Heaven. The seventh heaven in question turns out to be a pawn shop from which they get enough money to fund their skiing trip.
Days of Youth is hardly Ozu at his best, and the film seems to go on for slightly too long, but we're lucky that the film has survived at all (especially considering what appears to be significant damage to the nitrate stock), and it allows us to witness an early stage in the director's career. Ozu would soon realise that he was not best suited to slapstick comedy and begin to take his films down a different path, drawing influences from other directors, but for now he was doing exactly what Shochiku studios wanted him to, and doing it well.