Meditating on a Pillow (Shot)

Film realism, from a viewer's perspective, is most often perceived through visual or audio content rather than visual sequencing. Actors' believable performances, detailed sets, and "real" cinematography (hand-held shots, in particular) are all considered tenets of classical Hollywood realism and documentary-inspired film. Editing, however, is not usually part of these aesthetics: instead, American realism is best described through editing as transparent as possible.

Edits are placed in the center of the action in Hollywood-style continuity. The sequence of an action would follow thusly: an action begins onscreen in one shot, and at the peak of the action the edit cuts, switching perspective to show the concluded action at a different angle. Because the viewer's attention is focused on the action at its peak, the edit is much more imperceptible, more fluid. This arguably makes us unaware of the sudden change of perspective, and allows us to fully view the action, as we percieve it from both angles. The goal of this transparency is to obscure the artifice of the edited film. By using the action to cover up a cut, an editor neatly hides his work, allowing the viewer to experience the film without noticing that there was an edit. The less we notice it, the less apparent it is that we are watching a film showing an action rather than simply the action itself. This realist approach draws our attention away from the our knowledge that we are watching a film, thus creating a more immersive, and thus potentially more believable, experience - an important part of achieving realism in classic Hollywood editing.

In contrast, the rhythm of Yasujiro Ozu's editing follows exactly the opposite pattern. Put simply, rather than place the cuts between his shots at the center of an action, or during the middle of a line of dialog, Ozu places edits around them. Although this makes these cuts plainly obvious to the viewer, in contrast to the disguised edits typical of Hollywood realism, this also produces a unique, and arguably equally valid, type of realism. Just as Hollywood realism incorporates subtle, mid-action edits to make them more transparent, and thus limit an audience's awareness of the editor's presence, Ozu sought to limit his presence as well.

Ozu's edits are foremost and always straight, slow cuts; never bringing attention to his editing with stylized transitions such as dissolves or jump cuts. In sequencing an edit between actions, the scene moves in a subtle but powerful rhythm that dictates where the edits are placed. Ozu’s editing rhythm is not temporal, but always based on dialog. The internal rhythm of the shots, or the pace of the action appearing onscreen, produces this structure. This rhythm is often imperceptible because of Ozu’s stark compositions, thus this is merely our mental perception of the sparseness in each scene. Many film scholars, Donald Richie in particular, have noted that because the dialog dictates the placement of cuts, the progression of time onscreen (from the audience's perspective) moves at the exact same pace as the characters onscreen perceive it. Thus, the film moves at the pace of their lives, slowly but surely. We experience the moments onscreen as richly as the characters do, and thus their lives are much more immersive because the audience takes them in at the same pace.

In order to fully understand the realist aesthetic of Ozu's editing style, one must also consider the realism found in his cinematographic methods. A pioneer of what he coined the "tatami" shot (in reference to the traditional floor mats found in Japanese homes), in which the action is framed from a low, static angle, Ozu limits his presence behind the camera as much as he does in the editing booth. His shots are almost completely, even insistently, static, and are devoid of stylized methods using zooms, whip pans, and other things that look like visual trickery in comparison to Ozu's plainly composed shots. His camera usually follows characters navigating through plain domestic interiors, always silently watching them but never moving. This produces a strangely voyeuristic experience, watching the intensely personal moments play out between Ozu's many family subjects. The way in which actors often deliver the lines directly to the camera adds to this immersive experience, putting us in the eyes of the other characters and completing the illusion that the viewer is experiencing the scene too. Because we are never aware of the camera's presence as a narrative or aesthetic device, we experience the slow edits even more immersively. Because camera movements would add to the film's editing tempo, the exclusion of them solidifies Ozu's editing rhythm even more: just as real life can indeed be painfully slow, so are some of Ozu's awkward pauses and silences. To watch an Ozu film is sometimes a strangely immerse experience in embarrassment, as if the scenes we see are all too real because they are paced in such a realistic way.

Pacing is a crucial element in understanding the realist aesthetic of Ozu's films. Because the editing choices are so notably different from Hollywood realist style, we must consider that Ozu uses different methods of immersion than simply hiding the artifice of the film form. However, the stripped-bare nature of his editing and visual styles arguably contributes to a transparent effect as well. By pacing his domestic, personal scenes as naturalistically as possible, we take in every moment to the same degree as the film's characters. This immersive form of realism is unusual, almost a reaction to traditional Western editing, and is strangely hypnotic in its pace.

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As a side note, the reason I've refrained from mentioning Ozu's Tokyo Story as the specific subject of this analysis is because, having done a considerable amount of research on Ozu's body of work, I think it's safe to say that this analysis applies to almost all his films, not just Tokyo Story. If you'd like to read more of my analysis on Ozu's work and Zen aesthetic - specifically, in Late Spring - then never mind the shameless self-promotion and read the paper here! (downloads as a Word document)

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Works Cited
Richie, Donald. Ozu. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974. 179-182.