Scenes from Ozu

Abstract

Between 2009 and 2013, I was commissioned by the BFI to provide musical soundtracks to 12 silent films from the period 1929–1934 by the Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu (1903–1963). This experience sensitised me to Ozu’s narrative style and approach to locations, which privileges domestic spaces. This led me to develop a method in which musical episodes match spaces (rather than attaching musical tunes or leitmotifs to characters, as is more typical in standard Western film music practices). In this chapter, I focus on four of the score I wrote for this series in order to explore what it means to produce a sympathetic yet non-mimetic musical counterpoint to the visuals.