7 Underrated Films By Great Directors

6. I Was Born But. . .

One of Yasujirō Ozu’s most sublime films, this late Japanese silent (1932) describes the tragicomic disillusionment of two middle-class boys who see their father demean himself by grovelling in front of his employer; it starts off as a hilarious comedy and gradually becomes darker.

Ozu’s understanding of his characters and their social milieu is so profound and his visual style — which was much less austere and more obviously expressive during his silent period — so compelling that the film carries one along more dynamically than many of the director’s sound classics (including his semi-remake 27 years later, the more purely comic Good Morning, which has plenty of beauties of its own).

Though regarded in Japan mainly as a conservative director, Ozu was a trenchant social critic throughout his career, and the devastating understanding of social context that he shows here is full of radical implications.

Continue reading on the next page…