ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes the process of creating modern soundtracks that are not pastiche mock-ups of how American films might have sounded with local Japanese live ensembles of the 1930s. He argues that the music can match the swift changes in mood and temporal ellipses characteristic of Ozu’s cinema by allowing him inevitably Western orientation and musical language to acquire certain features that might be called ‘Ozu-esque’. Timings were approximate and the conductor, Patrick Bailey, managed the flow and pauses between scenes with great skill. Ozu developed his visual language through silent cinema productions at Shochiku. The BFI’s project to release on disc every one of Ozu’s films thus included many silent films. Ozu remediated Hollywood and British gangster and comic movies in his time; the BFI Ozu Collection remediates Ozu through contact with, arguably, Ozu-esque contemporary music packaged with critical research and commentary.
