Abstract
This paper examines the influence of Hollywood cinema on Ozu Yasujirō, particularly that of Ernst Lubitsch, the most important Hollywood filmmaker for Ozu. The paper starts by drawing out what the paper calls the aesthetics of “mobility” through the investigation of the discourse on Hollywood cinema in late-1920s Japan. To illuminate the idiosyncrasy of Ozu’s practice, it analyzes Ozu’s meticulous imitation of The Marriage Circle (Ernst Lubitsch, 1924) in Tokyo Chorus (1931) and Woman of Tokyo (1933) in terms of the mobility of the cinematic medium and the discontinuity implicated in such mobility.
