Region 4 Winners and Losers

    This release has to compete with several others.

    In Japan, the Region 2 release from Shochiku, released to coincide with Ozu's centenary in 2003, has no English subtitles.

    The Region 3 release from Panorama has some lesser quality English subtitles and the transfer seems to be poor. The only extra is a text biography of the directory, presumably the same one that appears on other Ozu films from this source. There is another Region 3 release from Bo Ying which has no extras. Both discs have no region coding and are NTSC.

    The Region 2 release is from Tartan. This has a photo gallery as an extra. Unfortunately this release is a standard conversion from NTSC to PAL.

    The Region 1 release comes from the Criterion Collection. In comparison to the Region 1 release, the Region 4 misses out on:

• audio commentary by Richard Pena

• Tokyo-ga (Wim Wenders documentary which looks at Ozu and Tokyo itself)

• 21-page booklet

    In comparison to the Region 4, the Region 1 misses out on

• audio commentary by Ross Gibson

• Madman trailers

    Although I haven't seen the Criterion, from the reviews and screen captures available on the internet I strongly suspect that the source materials used for the transfer are that same as that of the Region 4. However the Criterion seems to have some digital cleanup but also contrast boosting. On the other hand I have heard no reports of the posterization artefacts that are present on the Region 4. On this basis I think the Region 1 is to be preferred.