There Was a Father

There Was a Father (1942) is available to watch online on iFILM — a Japanese drama directed by Yasujirō Ozu, with Chishū Ryū as Shuhei Horikawa, a poor schoolteacher raising his son alone. An accident on a school outing ends his career; from that point, he rebuilds his life at a deliberate distance from the boy he is trying to give a future.

To put Ryohei through school, Shuhei places him with a farming family and takes work far away. They meet once a year — a fishing trip, a few hours, not much else. Years fold over each other. The son grows up, finds a post in Tokyo, and finally invites his father to come live with him. Ozu films this negotiation between duty and closeness without a single forced tear.

Made in 1942, while Japan was at war, the story carries weight that a peacetime version of the same material couldn't. Ozu, largely unknown outside Japan for decades, made one of cinema's most precise accounts of what fatherhood actually costs. Stream There Was a Father (1942) online on iFILM.