There Was a Father Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		5.0

There Was a Father Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Stephen Larson May 22, 2025

There Was a Father (1942) is being released as part of the BFI's Two Films by Yasujirō Ozu.

Ozu seldom made films with political overtones and Chichi ariki (There Was a Father) serves as a rare exception. When viewed today, it is absolutely important to consider that it was made during a period of Japan's wartime expansion in East Asia. Japanese films produced and released during the war were part of a propagandistic cycle because they were expected to accord with the country's "national policy." And yet the long version containing patriotic and morale-boosting content that Shochiku released in 1942 has not been seen in the postwar until this BFI edition. According to Tony Rayns (in a historical essay about the production featured in the booklet), US Army censors trimmed any conspicuous propaganda messages contained in the film following the war.

There Was a Father is surfeit with imagery of Buddhist icons and artifacts. This is reflective of not only Ozu honoring a timeless cultural edition but, as David Bordwell argues pretty convincingly in his book, Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema, Buddhism transformed into "a distinct political and ideological force" by 1942. Bordwell cites the formation of the Great Japan Buddhist Association (Dai Nihon Bukkyokai). One of its purposes was to support the government and the war effort. There Was a Father shows schoolboys visiting the Great Buddha statue in Kamakura along with a class photograph taken at the site. In addition, Ozu sets a scene inside a Buddhist temple and also films footage of Buddhist funeral rites. One of the main characters is seen praying at the family butsudan to honor his deceased mother.

We know we're in "classic Ozu" with this shot and its angle of framing.

In addition to a cinematic work that reflects contemporaneous sociopolitical and religious tropes, There Was a Father is a touching story about a father and his son. Shuhei Horikawa (Chishu Ryu), a widower and mathematics teacher, is raising his young son Ryohei (Haruhiko Tsugawa) on his own. When an accident robs him of one of his students, Horikawa takes accountability for it and resigns as teacher. Horikawa moves to Ueda, taking Ryohei with him. But when Horikawa takes a new job in Tokyo, he sends Ryohei to a dormitory.

The film is elliptical with a narrative that spans fifteen years without any expository titles or voice-overs to explain time lapses. Instead, Ozu fills in some gaps with dialogue. The film moves forward to when Ryohei (now played by Shuji Sano) is 25 and teaching in Akita. He only sees his father sporadically and often in places other than each other's abodes. Ryohei misses his father and becomes attached to him again when they reunite at a hot springs. But Horikawa reminds him that living on his own is important to become self-reliant when duty calls. (This could definitely be a message for Japanese soldiers gearing up to fight. Ryohei later enlists in the army.) While There Was a Father is largely considered a didactic work, I didn't find it heavy handed at all. Ozu deftly balances the nationalist themes with a humanistic message.

There Was a Father Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

A prefatory note appears before the start of the feature:

There Was a Father (2023) was restored in 2023 using the 16mm master positive owned by Shochiku Co., Ltd. and a 35mm print owned by the National Film Archive of Japan, restoring many censored scenes related to the war.

Additionally, the following text appears in the booklet:

There Was a Father was restored by Shochiku Co., Ltd. and National Film Archive of Japan in 4K resolution using a 35mm print located in Russia at Gosfilmofon and a 16mm Duplicating Negative held by Shochiku and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.37:1 with original mono audio.

Technical Producers Douglas Weir, Peter Stanley (BFI)
Thanks to Ayana Ando, Aya Takagawa and Mayumi Ito (Shochiku Co., Ltd.)
Disc producer Upekha Bandaranayake
Disc authoring Fidelity in Motion

As alluded to in the first part of this review, virtually all copies of the film remaining after World War II were the censored American version. Bordwell's 1988 book on Ozu states that a "duplicate negative, and prints [are] in existence." He lists the runtime as 87 minutes. Author Yoshida Kiju's 1998 book on the director (Ozu's Anti-Cinema) lists the movies as having 11 reels (2,588 meters). The Criterion Collection's 2010 DVD of There Was a Father (which also comes with The Only Son) contains this abridged edition. This Blu-ray from the BFI is a major milestone because it merges footage from extant archival prints to form the most complete version since the film's premiere. The BFI is over five minutes longer.

The image on the Criterion looks bruised and battered with damage marks appearing all the way through. The restoration that took place in Japan cleans up a significant number of artifacts. The censored footage taken from a couple sources and reinserted into the shorter cut is not in as good of shape but the restoration team and BFI technical producers have done their best to present it here. You can see from the BFI frames I've matched with the Criterion transfer how much the movie was in need of a massive restoration. An important fact is that the Criterion, framed at 1.33:1, is cropped compared to the 1.37:1 on the BFI.

Screenshot #s 1-10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, & 30 = BFI 2024 Blu-ray
Screenshot #s 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, & 29 = The Criterion Collection 2010 DVD

Ten scene selections accompany the 93-minute feature.

There Was a Father Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The BFI has supplied two LPCM 1.0 Mono mixes in the film's native Japanese, which share identical average bitrates (1152 kbps, 24-bit). Audio Track 1 appears to be more of a "raw' recording of the original mono while Audio Track 2 sounds like a remastered mix. I sampled and played both during two separate viewings. Criterion's lossy mono track has pops, crackles, and scratchy sounds for pretty much the feature's duration. While the BFI retains some age-related defects, spoken words are thankfully more audible in spite of the presence of high hiss. Also, dialogue registers at higher pitches and greater frequencies on the BFI compared to the Criterion, particularly on Track 2.

The BFI has provided optional English subtitles (e.g., see Screenshot #3).

There Was a Father Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Criterion's DVD has a video interview with David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, who deliver essay-worthy remarks about There Was a Father and other Japanese films of the era.

• NEW Audio Commentary by Film Critic Adrian Martin - in the first part of this feature-length track, Martin applies the film theories of Noël Burch to There Was a Father. He reads extracts from Shiguéhiko Hasumi's 1983 book on Ozu, which was translated into English and published by the University of California Press last year. Martin presents an interesting discussion about sublimation in the film. More, he discusses Ozu's use of sound and music. There are hardly any gaps. In English, not subtitled.

There Was a Father Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The BFI's extended version of There Was a Father is an important milestone because it presents the original uncensored cut for the first time since the film's domestic debut in 1942. Ozu and his cinematographer make effective use of some breathtaking locations. If you bought the Criterion DVD from fifteen years ago, you'll certainly want to procure this disc to experience the best presentation to date in picture and sound. MY HIGHEST RECOMMENDATION!