Record of a Tenement Gentleman (長屋紳士録, Nagaya shinshiroku) is a Japanese film written and directed by Yasujirō Ozu in 1947.
Tashiro (Chishū Ryū), Tamekichi (Reikichi Kawamura), and O-tane (Chōko Iida) are among the residents of a poor district of Tokyo that has been severely damaged in the bombing raids of 1944-45.
Tashiro returns one evening to the house he shares with Tamekichi and brings with him a boy of about seven named Kōhei (Hōhi Aoki).
Kawayoshi (Takeshi Sakamoto), a dyer who has children of his own, says he can’t, and the three of them draw lots to decide who will take the boy back to Chigasaki.
O-tane takes the boy to Chigasaki, where she learns that Kōhei and his father had been living in a rented room after their own house at Hachiōji was destroyed in the bombing.
The landlady tells O-tane that the two had left for Tokyo a few days previously as Kōhei's father, a carpenter, hoped to find work there.
At the meeting, the Kawayoshis provide a generous spread of food and drink bought with money that their son has won in the lottery.
Kōhei comes in with a pocket full of cigarette ends and nails that he has picked up in the street to give to his father.
O-tane and Kiku reflect on the contrast between their own carefree childhoods and the hardships facing children in the straitened postwar world.
She is a modern, Americanised young woman wearing trousers and a sweater, a headscarf, and dark glasses.
Tamekichi expresses the opinion that he won’t come back and when O-tane says she's worried he’ll go hungry he tells her that the boy will scavenge from dustbins.
O-tane and Kiku are sitting on a bench at the zoo watching Kōhei, dressed in new clothes, looking at the giraffe.
Back at home, O-tane is talking about plans for Kōhei to go to school when his father (Eitarō Ozawa) turns up.
The film ends with a montage of boys orphaned and made homeless by the war hanging about near the Saigō statue, aimlessly smoking and playing games.
[2] Dave Kehr argued that "Ozu deflects the sentimental thrust of the material by taking it all in through his passive, profoundly accepting point of view.
"[3] Tim Purtell of Entertainment Weekly assigned the film a "B" and wrote that although it is slow-moving, the work "rewards patience with rich sentiment that’s never mawkish.