Ozu and the Delicate Art of the Fart Gag

A portrait of childhood, domestic life, and consumerism in postwar suburban Tokyo, Yasujiro Ozu’s Good Morning is one of the Japanese master’s most charming and subtly incisive comedies. Made in 1959, this loose update of the director’s own 1932 silent masterpiece I Was Born, But . . . tells the lighthearted story of two young brothers who take a vow of silence after their parents refuse to buy them a television. Like many of Ozu’s dramas, the film observes the banalities and absurdities of everyday existence through the prism of intergenerational conflict, but it also delights in physical humor, including a running gag in which the boys exchange farts as a way of communicating with each other. On our just-released Blu-ray upgrade, film scholar David Bordwell delves into the nuanced ways in which Good Morning imbues the universal act of breaking wind with linguistic and musical dimensions.