Blu-ray, DVD Release: Tokyo Story

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Nov. 19, 2013
Price: Blu-ray/DVD Combo $39.95
Studio: Criterion


Tokyo Story movie sceneA profoundly stirring evocation of elemental humanity and universal heartbreak, the 1953 classic drama Tokyo Story is the crowning achievement of the unparalleled Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu (Late Spring).

The film, which follows an aging couple as they leave their rural village to visit their two married children in bustling postwar Tokyo, surveys the rich and complex world of family life with the director’s customary delicacy and incisive perspective on social mores.

Featuring lovely performances from Ozu regulars Chishu Ryu (There Was a Father) and Setsuko Hara (Late Autumn), Tokyo Story plumbs and deepens the director’s recurring themes of generational conflict, creating one of the great works of the international cinema.

Presented in Japanese with English subtitles, the Criterion Blu-ray and DVD of the movie contain the following features:

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on
the Blu-ray
• Audio commentary featuring Yasujiro Ozu scholar David Desser, editor of Ozu’s “Tokyo Story”
I Lived, But . . . , a two-hour documentary from 1953 about Ozu’s life and career, featuring interviews with critics and former cast and crew members
Talking with Ozu, a forty-minute tribute to the director from 1993, featuring the reflections of filmmakers Lindsay Anderson, Claire Denis, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Aki Kaurismäki, Stanley Kwan, Paul Schrader, and Wim Wenders
• Trailer
• New English subtitle translation
• A booklet featuring an essay by critic David Bordwell

 

 

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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.