The great actress and Ozu regular Setsuko Hara plays a mother gently trying to persuade her daughter to marry in this glowing portrait of family love and conflict—a reworking of Ozu’s 1949 masterpiece Late Spring. —The Criterion Collection
Yasujiro Ozu was born in the old Fukagawa district of Tokyo, to a fertilizer merchant, in 1903. In 1923, after a couple of years as an assistant teacher in rural Japan, Ozu was hired as assistant cameraman at the Shochiku Motion Picture Company. Early in his career, Ozu began to experiment with an idiosyncratic film style that ran contrary to the conventions of Japanese or Hollywood cinema of the day. He strove to reduce and simplify his film style; he cast such mainstays as the fade, the dissolve, and the pan from his cinematic palette. He shot solely from a low camera angle, using a 50mm lens, and he subordinated spatial continuity to visual aesthetics. Ozu directed his first film in 1927,The Sword of Penitence. In 1932, he began to hit his creative stride with the touching comedy I Was Born, But…, which was his first commercial success. During World War II, he made few films such as There Was a Father.
After the war, Ozu reached his creative peak and made some of his finest… read more
The fourth of six Ozu movies made in colour at the end of his career, this is a virtual re-write of the earlier Late Spring and again having a prominent role for the radiant Setsuko Hara. Standing out for me in a great cast of Ozu regulars was a feisty performance from Mariko Okada who went on to star in a lot of films that I want to see directed by her husband Yoshishige Yoshida...
Love Letters is the issue of Criticine that Alexis Tioseco was working on when he and Nika Bohinc were murdered last September. "One thing
Nobody reworked their own films better than Yasujiro Ozu, who reworks his melancholy black and white 1949 classic “Late Spring” to color, and to a younger generation, with this heartfelt comedy-drama… read review
potential spoilers:
(1960) Late Autumn
Another ‘marriage picture’ by Ozu, and this time it is three old men coniving to marry off the daughter of an old friend. But, the girl’s mother is… read review