I Was Born, But (Otona no miru ehon - Umarete wa mita keredo)

One of the last great Japanese silent films and one of director Yasujiro Ozu's first masterpieces, this gentle family comedy contrasts the complexities of adulthood with a child's innocence. Two young brothers, who are the unquestioned alpha-males of fellow classmates in their suburban Tokyo neighborhood, are outraged by their father's clownish and subservient behavior at his office. As the film progresses, the children come to accept that their father is not a great man, as they imagined, and in the process, they lose some of their innocence. Ozu reworked this film for his 1959 opus Ohayo.