A Straightforward Boy

A Straightforward Boy (Tokkan Kozo)
1929, b/w, silent, 28 min.
With Tomio Aoki, Tatso Saito, Takeshi Sakamoto

Long thought lost, this delightful little film was written quickly over beers in a Ginza bar and shot in three days, which may account for its freewheeling nature. A hapless crook kidnaps a bespectacled tyke whose name, Tokkan Kozo, means “a boy who charges into you.” The brat turns out to have an insatiable appetite for candy and is more trouble than he is worth. The child star Tomio Aoki became so popular that he changed his name to Tokkan Kozo and appeared in several other Ozu films.

The film turns out to be closer to 15 minutes, rather than the 28 minutes stated in the catalog.

The restored print begins with an unintentionally funny intro intertitle which basically says, "the beginning, the end, and some of the middle portion of this movie has been lost." Erm... so... what was restored, exactly?

Much of the film is slapstick humor involving a classic Dennis the Menace character. I guess it could be called "delightful"; it's certainly "freewheeling". It's not bad for a laugh, but it's too short. I didn't catch anything that suggests what was to follow in the director's career. One for the completists.