If one were to think of an equivalent to the film style of director Yasujiro Ozu it would have to be long novels suffused with detail, but never superfluous detail. Books such as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick- with its descriptions of the whaling industry and vessels, John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath- with its detailed rendering of the lives of migrant workers, and especially Betty Smith's A Tree Grows In Brooklyn- with its child-like view of a world that overwhelms fresh senses, come to mind, even though the film checks in at a mid-length range of an hour and forty-eight minutes. Ozu's cinema is utterly shorn of melodrama, for all that occurs within its frames advances some aspect of narrative, character development, or social commentary. Yet, some of the most affecting scenes in the whole of his 1949 film, Late Spring (Banshun), are realistic shots of toenail clippings or apple peels, designed to allow the viewer to feel they are intruding in on the reality of the characters. Then there are seemingly throwaway details that also lend authenticity, such as when a meter reader from the electric company comes and requires a stool to read the meter. It has nothing to do with the tale nor symbolism, but immediately 'realizes' the situation for most viewers, especially when a more important character has to get the stool for the ephemeral character.
This film not only was a change in technique and tenor for Ozu, from more socially blunt works, but marked the beginning of the final phase of Ozu's long career, where his focus became almost exclusively the Japanese family unit in the post-war transition years, and his camera movement started to become more and more static with every film released. The film was penned by Ozu and longtime collaborator Kôgo Noda, from a novel called Father And Daughter, by Kazuo Hirotsu. The very naturalistic style of the screenplay and camera work lends an air of realism to Ozu's style that has often been compared to Italian Neo-Realism of the same era, although Ozu's work from this era was never as overtly political as that of the Italian filmmakers. The film follows the life of an aging father, a professor, Shukichi Somiya (Chishu Ryu), and his twenty-seven year old daughter, Noriko (Setsuko Hara), who still lives at home. Worried over her ending up alone, and prodded on by Noriko's aunt Masa Taguchi (Haruko Sugimura)- sister of Shukichi or his wife (it's never delineated), he tries to push his daughter out of the nest and into marital bliss. We never learn what happened to the wife and mother of the household, but we can guess she was killed in the war. We do learn that Noriko was in a labor camp and was very ill and skinny, but has now gotten healthy and plump, according to one of Shukichi's Academic colleagues, Jo Onodera (Masao Mishima), whose remarriage Noriko deems distasteful and filthy. Onodera is a jovial man, and merely one of many who seems to obsess on Noriko's marital status . What makes Late Spring a great film is that, like great classic novels, it is never preachy nor condescending, but involving. Think of the great novels I compared it to, and then think of the crap put out in recent years by big name authors such as Joyce Carol Oates, T.C. Boyle, or Toni Morrison, and then think of this film and preachy PC films like Brokeback Mountain or Crash, and the comparative difference is manifest. Late Spring can be political when a character takes up an empty seat with his belongings or when Hara forces a smile. One need not have a character stick his tongue down another male character's throat, nor his fingers between a female characters' leg to denote the political stance of the film and filmmaker.
Then there are the terrific technical cinematographic aspects of the film- by Yuharu Atsuta, such as Ozu's patented low angle shots; eyeline mismatches; limited camera movement- such as when Noriko and Hattori go biking, yet it seems as if the world moves by them, not the other way around; the lack of interstitial fades and dissolves; as well as narrative devices, such as ellipses- as when we see Noriko's devastation at her father's supposed remarriage, and then transition to her seemingly positive and happy reaction to meeting 'Gary Cooper;' and transition shots of unidentified locations to link themes and elided time intervals. In many ways, the camera of Ozu frames life similarly to that of Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer, or the great Dutch painting masters, where space, the tension built by spare movement, and the relative positioning of characters is all important.
Ozu has tritely been labeled the most Japanese of all directors by lazy critics, as opposed to his two great contemporaries- Kenji Mizoguchi and the far more famous Akira Kurosawa, both of whose reputations were made with historical dramas, but Ozu is actually the most modern of all the classic directors from Japan, and probably the most Western, if not in approach then in attitude. Late Spring shows this to be true, and considering that the film was a distinct reinvention of the man's art, its success is all the more noteworthy. It's akin to a minor dime store novelist from the late 19th Century all of a sudden morphing into Mark Twain. Were most midlife crises handled as ably- nay, greatly- as this the work of such an artist as Yasujiro Ozu would not be needed to illumine the problem. It almost makes one wish for the human race to be continued to be plagued with ills, for only then will the relevance of such artistic rendering still be appreciated, right along with the greatest of novels and novelists.
And the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago .
This film not only was a change in technique and tenor for Ozu, from more socially blunt works, but marked the beginning of the final phase of Ozu's long career, where his focus became almost exclusively the Japanese family unit in the post-war transition years, and his camera movement started to become more and more static with every film released. The film was penned by Ozu and longtime collaborator Kôgo Noda, from a novel called Father And Daughter, by Kazuo Hirotsu. The very naturalistic style of the screenplay and camera work lends an air of realism to Ozu's style that has often been compared to Italian Neo-Realism of the same era, although Ozu's work from this era was never as overtly political as that of the Italian filmmakers. The film follows the life of an aging father, a professor, Shukichi Somiya (Chishu Ryu), and his twenty-seven year old daughter, Noriko (Setsuko Hara), who still lives at home. Worried over her ending up alone, and prodded on by Noriko's aunt Masa Taguchi (Haruko Sugimura)- sister of Shukichi or his wife (it's never delineated), he tries to push his daughter out of the nest and into marital bliss. We never learn what happened to the wife and mother of the household, but we can guess she was killed in the war. We do learn that Noriko was in a labor camp and was very ill and skinny, but has now gotten healthy and plump, according to one of Shukichi's Academic colleagues, Jo Onodera (Masao Mishima), whose remarriage Noriko deems distasteful and filthy. Onodera is a jovial man, and merely one of many who seems to obsess on Noriko's marital status . What makes Late Spring a great film is that, like great classic novels, it is never preachy nor condescending, but involving. Think of the great novels I compared it to, and then think of the crap put out in recent years by big name authors such as Joyce Carol Oates, T.C. Boyle, or Toni Morrison, and then think of this film and preachy PC films like Brokeback Mountain or Crash, and the comparative difference is manifest. Late Spring can be political when a character takes up an empty seat with his belongings or when Hara forces a smile. One need not have a character stick his tongue down another male character's throat, nor his fingers between a female characters' leg to denote the political stance of the film and filmmaker.
Then there are the terrific technical cinematographic aspects of the film- by Yuharu Atsuta, such as Ozu's patented low angle shots; eyeline mismatches; limited camera movement- such as when Noriko and Hattori go biking, yet it seems as if the world moves by them, not the other way around; the lack of interstitial fades and dissolves; as well as narrative devices, such as ellipses- as when we see Noriko's devastation at her father's supposed remarriage, and then transition to her seemingly positive and happy reaction to meeting 'Gary Cooper;' and transition shots of unidentified locations to link themes and elided time intervals. In many ways, the camera of Ozu frames life similarly to that of Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer, or the great Dutch painting masters, where space, the tension built by spare movement, and the relative positioning of characters is all important.
Ozu has tritely been labeled the most Japanese of all directors by lazy critics, as opposed to his two great contemporaries- Kenji Mizoguchi and the far more famous Akira Kurosawa, both of whose reputations were made with historical dramas, but Ozu is actually the most modern of all the classic directors from Japan, and probably the most Western, if not in approach then in attitude. Late Spring shows this to be true, and considering that the film was a distinct reinvention of the man's art, its success is all the more noteworthy. It's akin to a minor dime store novelist from the late 19th Century all of a sudden morphing into Mark Twain. Were most midlife crises handled as ably- nay, greatly- as this the work of such an artist as Yasujiro Ozu would not be needed to illumine the problem. It almost makes one wish for the human race to be continued to be plagued with ills, for only then will the relevance of such artistic rendering still be appreciated, right along with the greatest of novels and novelists.
And the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago .