突貫小僧 | 1929 | Comedy

Title: 突貫小僧 | 1929 | Comedy Director: Yasujirō Ozu Studio: Shochiku Kinema Starring: Tomio Aoki, Tatsuo Saitō, Takeshi Sakamoto Based on: Loosely on “The Ransom of Red Chief” by O. Henry Release Date: November 23, 1929 Runtime: 14 Format: Silent, black-and-white, 35mm, 1.33:1, Japanese intertitles Country: Japan Language: Silent Genres: Comedy, Crime, Short --- Chapters: 00:00:00 Alley games and a watchful stranger 00:03:10 The snatch 00:06:40 Cake, toys, and escalating pranks 00:09:30 Audience with the boss 00:12:30 Return and resolution --- Summary: A small-time crook abducts a mischievous boy from a Tokyo alley, expecting an easy ransom. Instead, the child’s boundless energy and pranks turn the tables, exhausting his captors and unraveling their plan. Lighthearted and fast-paced, the film inverts a crime premise into gentle slapstick, anticipating Ozu’s later interest in family dynamics and the viewpoint of children. --- Background: Produced at Shochiku’s Kamata Studio, this was among Ozu’s early silent comedies and marked a breakthrough for child actor Tomio Aoki. The original release ran approximately two reels, but for many years the film survived mainly in a shortened home-movie edition. Recent discoveries have revealed longer fragments, underscoring the film’s status as a formative work in Ozu’s prewar period and its loose kinship with O. Henry’s comic kidnapping tale. --- Trivia: Ozu cast Tomio Aoki after being impressed with his presence in earlier work; Aoki subsequently became popularly known by the film’s title character name, “Tokkan Kozo.” The screenplay credit “Chuji Nozu” is a composite pseudonym historically associated with Ozu and close collaborators including Tadao Ikeda and Kōgo Noda. The film was long known chiefly via a Pathé-Baby home edition of roughly 14 minutes; later-found elements expanded the surviving material. Although a kidnapping story, the tone stays playful, with gags built around cakes, toys, and the boy’s relentless antics rather than menace. --- Public Domain / Rights: Original Release: November 23, 1929 Original Studio / Distributor: Shochiku Kinema Copyright Status: Public Domain Renewal: Unknown --- Hashtags: 突貫小僧 AStraightforwardBoy YasujiroOzu Ozu Shochiku SilentFilm JapaneseCinema 1929 PublicDomain Source page: https: //commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E7%AA%81%E8%B2%AB%E5%B0%8F%E5%83%A7_(1929).webm Direct media URL: https: //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2e/%E7%AA%81%E8%B2%AB%E5%B0%8F%E5%83%A7_%281929%29.webm