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.

DVD/150: TODA-KE NO KYODAI (Brothers and Sisters of The Toda Family) (Yasujiro Ozu, 1941)

Ozu's first film after two years in the Japanese army fighting on mainland China was the box-office hit TODA-KE NO KYODAI.  It shows the beginning of his more focused storyelling which was to emerge eight years later with BANSHUN (Late Spring): stories of family breakups, mixing drama and gentle humour with a sad undertow.

The Toda family gather for a group photograph outside their parent's large home to celebrate the father's 69th birthday but that night he dies from a heart attack...

The family discover their father was the guarantor for massive debts accrued by a failing business.  They sell the family home and possessions to pay half the debt, but cannot sell a dilapidated beach home.

It is decided that homeless Mrs Toda and youngest daughter Setsuko should move between the houses of the eldest three children.

But the women are treated as an embarrassing, unwanted burdon...

Shelf or charity shop?  This is on the same dvd as the glorious TOKYO STORY so of course it's a keeper but also because it is the first film where Ozu's vision of film-making started falling into place.  The film has a pace and an elegance that belies it's age and Ozu offers us his characters without judgement, just a well-observed resignation of their failings.  Ozu's favourite actor Chishu Ryu is seen in a bit part as a friend of the youngest son Shojiro who is charismatically played by Shin Saburi, the first of five roles he played for Ozu.  Ayako Katsuragi and Mieko Takamine are fine as the unwanted mother and daughter while Kuniko Miyake and Mitsuko Yoshikawa are hissable as the unwelcoming sister-in-law and sister of the Toda family.  There is also a very nice performance from Michiko Kuwano as Setsuko's friend: sadly the actress - who had played a lead role in Ozu's WHAT DID THE LADY FORGET? in 1937 - died several years later aged only 31. The film's odd, abrupt ending was the result of Ozu realizing that he didn't have two days left to film but two hours!