Passing Fancy

Takeshi Sakamoto

Yasujiro Ozu's Passing Fancy, from 1933, is good comedy that doesn't quite reach the heights of his masterpieces from this period. Set in a working class district in Tokyo, the film chiefly concerns the relationship between Kihachi (Takeshi Sakamoto), a brewery worker, and Tomio (Tokkan Kozo), his latency aged son. In a child is father to the man twist, Tomio is a model son whereas Dad is a drunken and illiterate lout. The movie begins with Kihachi and his brewery buddy Jiro (Den Obinata)  toting an sleepy Tomio along as they make the rounds of the local drinking establishments. The next morning it is up to Tomio, wielding a baseball bat as the totem of his authority, to rouse his Dad and get him ready for work. 

The love/hate relationship between father and son is the strongest element of the film. Takeshi Sakamoto's boozy bravado holds together the disparate elements of the film. Tokkan Kozo, who had appeared in Ozu's I Was Born, But with Sakamoto, is equally effective. The plot contains a melodramatic love triangle between Kihachi, Jiro, and homeless waif, Harue (Nobuko Fushimi). Kihachi eventually realizes that he is too old for Harue and that his feelings are merely the passing fancy of the title. Jiro and Harue are fairly dull characters with few foibles to latch onto. Worse for the viewer is Tomio's near death experience after gorging on sweets and experiencing "acute enteritis".(!) Kihachi, reeling from his son's shame at his father's lack of status and respect, tries to spoil him with candy money, but this backfires and sets up a climactic act of redemption.

Passing Fancy lacks the visual complexity and invention of his previous feature, Dragnet Girl. The few scenes of juvenile mayhem are choreographed in a less impactful fashion than in I Was Born, But. Still, there are wonderful moments only a master like Ozu could elicit. Intimate close-ups evoke the characters' feelings of vanity, shame, and loss. Still life shots of household items give the film a nice tactility. Ultimately, though, this is little different from the Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper potboilers of the era.