Genre:
Drama
Release Date: 05/09/2006
SubTitles: English
Dubbed: Japanese
Sound: DD1
Run Time: 108 min
Flags: Suitable for Children
Distributor/Studio: Criterion
Veteran Japanese writer/director
Yasujiro Ozu's second postwar production was 1949's
Late Spring or
Banshun.
Chisu Ryu plays another of
Ozu's realistic middle-class types, this time a widower with a marriageable daughter. Not wishing to see the girl resign herself to spinsterhood,
Ryu pretends that he himself is about to be married. The game plan is to convince the daughter that they'll be no room for her at home, thus forcing her to seek comfort and joy elsewhere. What makes this homey little domestic episode work is the rapport between
Chisu Ryu and
Setsuko Hara, who plays the daughter.
Late Spring is no facile Hollywood farce; we like these people, believe in them, and wish them the best.
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Elegantly shot and quietly powerful,
Late Spring is considered one of
Yasujiro Ozu's finest films, along with
Tokyo Story (1953) and
Early Summer (1951). Like those films,
Spring stars beautiful, enigmatic
Setsuko Hara as Noriko, a woman reluctant to abandon her widowed father for marriage. And like most
Ozu films,
Spring subtly details the clash between the values of traditional Japan and those of contemporary society. Either Noriko leaves her father and enters the confining yet socially sanctioned world of marriage or she stays with him and enters the alienated labor pool like her thoroughly modernized friend Aya. Yet the film could just as easily be read as a wistful elegy to lost freedom. Though
Ozu shoots the film with his trademark idiosyncratic restraint -- including wide and low camera angles, mismatched eyelines, and long shots of unpeopled spaces -- the camera is remarkably mobile during the first half of the film. Noriko is seen enjoying herself on a bicycle ride with a handsome young man and later exulting on a train trip. As Noriko progresses towards marriage, the camera confines her, echoing her own social entrapment. By the end of the film, Noriko's presence is replaced with a wedding portrait, while her father sits alone in an empty house.
Late Spring is a remarkably moving film by one of world cinema's finest masters.
~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
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