For international audiences it is generally thought that Akira Kurosawa is Japan's greatest-ever film director. In Japan, however, the overwhelming consensus gives that honour to Yasujiro Ozu. Between 1927 and his death in 1962 Ozu directed numerous comedies and dramas, each of which seemed to perfectly capture the changing landscape of Japanese domestic life. His films are tonally and visually distinctive, making extensive use of low static camera angles, direct address to camera, and rigid geometric editing.
The low angles made sense, since his films were almost universally set inside traditional Japanese homes. The camera sits inevitably at the height of an observer sitting upon a tatami mat, giving the viewer the sense of sitting in the room and observing the action. Ozu also disliked excessive drama, and was known for cutting entire scenes out of his films if he felt they were making events feel too melodramatic. He also regularly broke his scenes up with what the critic Nöel Burch called "pillow shots": small triptych sequences dividing moments in time that would give an abstract sense of place or emotion. The much-vaunted "180 degree rule", in which camera angles from one edit to another must generally point to the one side of a room, Ozu freely ignored.
