DVD/150: SANMA NO AJI (AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON) (Yasujiro Ozu, 1962)

After a career spanning 53 films over 35 years, Yasujiro Uzo died in 1963 from throat cancer.  His final film was released the previous year, SANMA NO AJI.

Ozu again focusses on a middle-class family as Japan embraces modernity.

Widower Hirayama lives with daughter Michiko and younger son Kazuo.  His older son Koichi is married to nagging Akiko who wants all the latest gadgets.

Hirayama is nagged by old friends Kawai and Horie to get Michiko married - although she doesn't want to - and Hirayama reflects on this after meeting the sad daughter of his school professor who is stuck looking after him.

Koichi's friend - who Machiko quietly likes - admits he has a girlfriend, so Kawai suggests a man he knows.

Michiko relents and marries. but after the wedding Hirayama is alone: dressed in his best suit someone asks did he attend a funeral and he replies "Something like that". 

Shelf or charity shop?  A shelf on it's own.  A perfect distillation of Ozu's themes and pure, spare storytelling.  While preparing the script with regular co-writer Kogo Noda, Ozu's beloved mother died which cast a pall over the process and there is a sadness lurking in the corners of the film which comes into it's own at the end when Hirayama returns home to the house he now only shares with his youngest son who obviously will soon leave too. Ozu's film pops with Ozu regular Yuharu Atsuta's Fujicolour cinematography and the score by Ozu's collaborator Kojun Saito.  As always Ozu drew great performances from some favourite actors: Ryuji Kita and Nobuo Nakamura are delightful as Harayama's interfering friends, Kyoko Kishida is eye-catching as a friendly bar owner, while Haruko Sugimura, in her 9th Ozu film, has only one scene but is sensational as the old teacher's sad daughter.  Keiji Sada and Mariko Okada are good as Hirayama's bickering son and daughter-in-law while Shima Iwashita has a rare gravity as Machiko. But above all, Ozu's favourite actor Chishu Ryu is wonderful as Hirayama, beautifully underplayed and heartbreaking in his sozzled loneliness.  Although the film seems like the perfect 'last film', Ozu was working on a new project when he sadly died on his 60th birthday.  He was buried with his mother, the gravestone bears no name just the Japanese character for 'nothingness'.

Arigato Ozu-san, arigato.

DVD/150: AKIBIYORI (LATE AUTUMN) (Yasujiro Ozu, 1960)

Ozu's classic LATE SPRING's plot was reworked for LATE AUTUMN and here Ozu intermingles humour and drama equally.

At the seventh memorial of Mr Miwa's death, his three friends meet his widow Akiko and 24 year-old daughter Ayako.  The men all courted Akiko when young and still think her attractive.  They decide to meddle in their lives and find Ayako a husband.

Akiko teaches dressmaking and Ayako works in an office with her friend Yuriko and has no wish to get married and leave Akiko alone.  But the plot continues: Mr Mamiya suggests Ayako meet his employee Goto and they start a tentative friendship.

The men decide if Akika remarries then Ayako need not worry. So widower Hirayama is chosen as her suitor but Ayako discovers the plot, misunderstanding that Akiko has agreed to re-marry.

Yuriko decides to sort the mess out but Akiko makes the ultimate decision...

 

 

Shelf or charity shop?  A shelfer.  Ozu-san again provides a memorable insight into the unacknowledged changes that end a family unit. The initial air of a comedy slowly gives way to the sadness of the two women at being manipulated apart.  Setsuko Hara delivers another wonderful Ozu performance as Akiko: eleven years before she had played the daughter not wanting to leave her widowed father in LATE SPRING but now she's the parent, always smiling and sad-eyed and whose final shot remains in the mind; saying volumes without saying a word.  She is well partnered by Yoko Tsukasa as her daughter Ayako, she would go on to appear in Ozu's following film. Keiji Sada delivered another fine performance as the proposed husband Goto, while three Ozu veterens Shin Saburi, Nobuo Nakamura and Ryuji Kita are great as the meddling trio of friends.  Ozu's favourite actor Chishu Ryu appears in a two scene cameo as Akiko's brother-in-law.

 

 

DVD/150: HIGANBANA (EQUINOX FLOWER) (Yasujiro Ozu, 1958)

Just as Ozu came late to making sound films, so he waited seven years to make his first film in colour.

Businessman Hirayama is the man people turn to in a crisis.  Speaking at a wedding, he congratulates the couple for marrying for love, unlike his marriage to Kiyoko which was arranged by their parents.

His schoolfriend Mikami did not attend the wedding, too ashamed as his daughter has left home after he refused her wish to marry a musician and he asks Mikami to help sort it out.

A young man, Taniguchi, appears in Hirayama's office and tells him that he works with his older daughter Setsuko and they wish to marry.  Hirayama later confronts Setsuko and refuses to give his blessing as he was not consulted.

Thanks to his niece Yukiko and a mournful class reunion, Hirayama understands that parents must ultimately give way over their children's lives.

Shelf or charity shop?  Def shelf!  Just as Jane Austen described her work as "the little bit (two inches wide) of ivory on which I work with so fine a brush" so Ozu explores again the faultlines beneath middle-class families of mid-20th Century Japan, still haunted by the war years and out-of-step with the rush to modernity.  In his inimitable style, it's a humourous film which still finds space for the audience to pause for thought, usually at the same time as his characters.  Ozu finds a harmony in the use of colour - the colour red really pops out in scenes - and again elicits lovely performances from his cast of regulars.  Shin Saburi (his fourth Ozu film) is fine as Hirayama while Kinuyo Tanaka (her seventh Ozu) is a delight as his wife Kiyoko who admits to remembering the war years fondly as they kept the family together.  Keiji Sada made his Ozu debut as Taniguchi (looking like a Japanese Gregory Peck) and would appear in three further Ozu films before his tragic death at 37 in a car accident.  Teiji Takahashi is a delight in his third Ozu outing, as the office underling who Hirayama pumps for information about his prospective son-in-law, tragically he was killed the following year, also in a car crash.  Ozu's favourite actor Chishu Ryu appeared in 52 of Ozu's 54 films and here plays the old friend Mikami wonderfully, he even gets to sing a sad acapella song at the school reunion as Ozu's camera stays fixed on him.  Another Ozu regular Nobuo Nakamura is a pleasure to see again as another of Hirayama's old friends. Fujiko Yamamoto made her only Ozu appearance as the resourceful Yukiko and won a Best Actress award for her performance; on loan from a rival studio, she was one of the main reasons for the use of colour!  A gentle masterpiece from Ozu San.