the first, tentative taste of a very adult lesson about patriarchy and pecking order in Japan’s social hierarchies

[I Was Born, But . . .] is a master class -- one of the [Ozu's] earliest -- in the art of distilling emotional intensity from quiet lives.

Ozu's movie is also smart at levels almost too subtle to discern, perhaps not so much smart as wise.

A family comedy delicately attuned to the smallest gestures and emotional registers, but also a movie that captures the woes and worries of the Japanese middle-class on the cusp of modernity.