The best Keiji Sada’s comedy movies

A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of inter­generational relationships, Good Morning tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his child protagonists. Shot in stunning color and set in a suburb of Tokyo where housewives gossip about the neighbors’ new washing machine and unemployed husbands look for work as door-to-door salesmen, this charming comedy refashions Ozu’s own silent classic I Was Born, But . . . to gently satirize consumerism in postwar Japan.

Later in his career, Ozu started becoming increasingly sympathetic with the younger generation, a shift that was cemented in Equinox Flower, his gorgeously detailed first color film, about an old-fashioned father and his newfangled daughter.

A girl who'd left her hometown for the exciting adventure of the big city returns home years later for a visit, soon somehow causing scandal.

A matchmaker looks to unite a young woman from a wealthy Tokyo family with the humble owner of an auto garage.

A story about four best friends and their lives inside and outside college. Then suddenly one of them receives a surprising offer to be a movie star.

The plans of a trio of burglars are continually thwarted by the arrival of visitors to the house they plan to rob.