Late Spring [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Yasujiro Ozu Yasujiro Ozu

Overview

"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."

Product Details

Release Date:	04/17/2012
UPC:	0715515094412
Original Release:	1949
Source:	Criterion Collection
Presentation:	[B&W]
Sound:	[stereo]
Language:	English
Time:	1:48:00

Special Features

Audio Commentary by Richard Peña, Program Director of New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center; Tokyo-ga (1985), Filmmaker Wim Wender's Ninety-Two minute documentary about Director Yasujiro Ozu; ; Plus: A booklet featuring Essays by critic Michael Atkinson and Japanese-film historian Donald Richie, as well as Ozu's thoughts on Screenwriter Kogo Noda

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Yasujiro Ozu	Shukichi Somiya
Chishu Ryu	Noriko
Setsuko Hara	Masa Taguchi
Haruko Sugimura	Suichi Hattori
Hohi Aoki	Aya Kitagawa
Jun Osami	Shuichi Hattori
Masao Mishima	Jo Onodera
Yoshiko Tsubouchi	Kiku
Kuniko Miyake	Akiko Miwa
Yôko Katsuragi	Misako
Toyo Takahashi	Actor
Jun Tanizaki	Actor
Ichirô Shimizu	Actor
Youko Benisawa	Actor
Manzaburo Umewaka	Actor
Nobu Nojima	Actor
Ichiro Kitamura	Actor
Haruo Yasufuku	Actor
Soichi Konparu	Actor
Yumeji Tsukioka	Actor
Yumeji Tusikioka	Actor
Senji Ito	Composer

Technical Credits

Yasujiro Ozu	Director
Takeshi Yamamoto	Producer

Editorial Reviews

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.