#331: OZU, Yasujiro: Late Spring (1949)

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OZU, Yasujiro (Japan)
Late Spring [1949]
Spine #331
DVD


One of the most powerful of Yasujiro Ozu's family portraits, Late Spring (Banshun) tells the story of a widowed father who feels compelled to marry off his beloved only daughter. Eminent Ozu players Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara command this poignant tale of love and loss in postwar Japan, which remains as potent today as ever — almost alone justifying Ozu's inclusion in the pantheon of cinema's greatest directors.

108 minutes
Black & White
Monaural
in Japanese
1:33:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2006
Director/Writers


Based on the novel Chichi to musume (Father and Daughter) by Kazuo Hirotsu.
Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu.
Ozu was 46 when he directed Late Spring.

The above précis is typical of any Ozu film! It is like looking at the ingredients on a bottle of Evian: “natural spring water.”

This is what you’re going to get. A film with a thin plot, focusing on the personalities and “love and loss.”

That said, what you will find below are details of how Ozu made this film; how it was made during the Occupation, and little details to observe, which increase one’s appreciation of this masterpiece.

Needless to say, SPOILERS AHEAD:

**

Setsuko Hara (Noriko Somiya) was born in 1920 as Masae Aida. Her sister was married to a film director, smoothing her entry into the industry, and at age 15, she made her film debut as a young girl in Tetsu Taguchi’s 1935 film Tamerau nakare wakodo yo (“Do Not Hesitate, Young Folks”), taking on the stage name by which she is now internationally known …

In her role in the German-Japanese co-production of Die Tochter des Samurai (“Atarashiki Tsuchi”) (“The New Earth”) — co-directed by Arnold Fanck and Mansaku Itami, she plays a woman who (unsuccessfully) attempts to kill herself in a volcano!

Throughout the war, many of her roles were like this — the “tragic heroine” figure. Here she is as a 16-year-old:


The best role (and her best performance to date) — right after the war, was in Kurosawa’s 1946 film “No Regrets For Our Youth.” (Eclipse Series 7). Based on a true story, she plays a middle-class daughter of a left-wing professor at the start of the war, whose dreamy illusions are shattered by events from both the left and the right, and at the end of the film, she is transformed into a new woman, who leaves behind her middle-class life to work in the fields.

Ozu must have seen this performance and was probably determined to use her.

Her first film with him is this one.

**
  • Just as Ozu made a trilogy of “Kihachi” films (culminating with An Inn in Tokyo [1935]), this film begins a three-part “Noriko” series — followed by Early Summer (1951) (Spine #240) and Tokyo Story (1953) (Spine #217)
  • This is the only film since A Story of Floating Weeds (1934) (Spine #232) not to have used the burlap background behind the opening credits. Instead, we have what looks an aerial view of dried, cracked mud …
  • The film begins with four extraordinarily beautiful pillow shots:
    • (11 sec) Sign in Japanese and English: “Kitakamakura Station.” We hear the ticking of a telegraph and a bell sounds …
      • Ozu’s grave is in Kamakura:
    • (6 sec) Railroad tracks, fence, trees and sky
    • (6 sec) Unlit signal light framed between two poles; lush trees
    • (7 sec) Roof
  • After a cut, leisurely music, birds chirping.
  • The pacing is so relaxed.
  • The camera is at one end of a hallway, facing five women in kimonos, seated in an L-shape. Another woman enters — her back to the camera — and kneels, bows to the other women, who return her bow with a deep unison group bow …
  • Reverse angle and we get our first shot of the beautiful Setsuko Hara.
  • She sits down next to her aunt, Masa Taguchi (the amazing Haruko Sugimura), another Ozu newcomer (although she was already a veteran actress), who will become a regular in the final Ozu films.
    • Kurosawa would use Sugimura to great effect in Red Beard (1965) (Spine #159)
  • The group converses; another woman, Akiko Miwa (Kuniko Miyake) enters, same bowing, then …
  • Ozu cuts to three additional pillow shots:
    • Stone steps
    • Flowers
    • Teahouse
  • Back to the women. Tea ceremony
  • Transition: CU of Akiko; ext.: square stone block with hole in the middle; woodsy hillside …
  • Int.: Shoichi Hattori (Jun Usami) and Shukichi Somiya (Chishû Ryû), working at a desk.
  • They are sorting out the confusion in the spelling of Friedrich List and Franz Liszt. Hattori reads out the dates — “1811-1886.” He is referring to Liszt, rather than List, whose dates were 1789-1846.
  • The doorbell is heard (an iconic sound in this film) — it is the electric company meter reader.
  • Noriko arrives. We learn that Shukichi is working on a manuscript that was “due yesterday.” We don’t learn much more, except that Noriko seems to hold a certain power over her father (he wants to play mahjong; she won’t permit it until he finishes his work) and that they are very comfortable with one another (he pretends to be angry, gruffly ordering her to make some tea; she laughs) …
  • Cut; we’re on a train, a scene of marvelous shooting and editing …
  • Noriko runs into Jo Onodera (Masao Mishima) and they have an important conversation at the restaurant/bar Takigawa.
    • Notice the direct frontal MCU-CU shots which cut from character to character, which is at this point an identifiable Ozu-ian trait!
  • Noriko and Onodera seem to have an easy-going relationship — she is discussing something very personal with him, expressing in no uncertain terms that she finds his remarriage to be “filthy.” She does it all with that cute smile, but she means every word she says. This is mono no aware.
  • In the next scene, Shukichi is calmly smoking and drinking at his little desk as Noriko arrives with her guest, Onodera.
  • Thus begins the first of many scenes in this Occupation-era film where we get to explore Ozu’s relationship with SCAP. Kyoko Hirano’s fascinating 1994 book, Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo, sheds much light on a line from this scene:
  • Noriko is going to warm up some sake. As she leaves, her father asks:
    • “How was your blood count?”
    • “Down to 15.”
    • “Really? That’s good.”
    • Onodera: “She’s looking much healthier.” CU: “It was forced labor during the war that made her ill.”
  • The original line in the script was “It was due to her work after being conscripted by the navy during the war.”
    • Hirano: “The American censors allowed no sympathetic, indeed no noncondemnatory, mention of Japanese militarism. It may be argued that they were being unreasonably meticulous on this point … it is difficult to understand what the danger might have been in specifying that the work was done for the Navy.” (p. 49) …
  • A very funny scene follows:
    • ONODERA: “Are you close to the sea here?”
    • SHUKICHI: “A 15-minute walk.”
    • “That’s rather far. Is it on this side?” (pointing over his shoulder)
    • “No. That side.” (motioning with his head)
    • “And the shrine is over this way, right?” (pointing)
    • Ozu pulls the camera back a bit. “No, that way.” (pointing)
    • “Which way is Tokyo?”
    • “That way.”
    • “So east is this direction?”
    • “No, that direction.”
    • “Has it always been that way?”
    • “Absolutely.” (Watch Ryû’s face — wonderful amused reaction)
    • ONODERA: “No wonder Yoritomo moved his shogunate here. The enemy couldn’t find its way around!”
  • Transition shot: the sea, waves rolling in …
  • Music; a cadence; then a jaunty new theme, beeped out by a trumpet. And the camera is moving! An unusual, long outdoor dolly, running parallel to the sea.
  • CU, first Noriko, then Shoichi, riding bicycles (studio shots with process). Cut to a wide-angle shot of the two of them, riding down the road (location) …
  • 0:23:01: The iconic Coca-Cola sign!
  • An important scene: Shukichi and Masa are pondering Shoichi as a match for Noriko. Father returns home, and seems disturbed to learn from Noriko that Shoichi is already engaged to someone else. Notice how naturally everything is shown: We see how Noriko cares for her father — picking up his clothes, making his dinner, etc.
  • Perhaps Hattori is not so certain of his engagement. He has coffee with Noriko and has tickets to hear the violinist Mari Iwamoto.

  • Noriko ultimately declines to attend, worried that his fiancée will get the wrong idea. Iwamoto is heard but not seen (playing the slow movement of Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata) … she was born in 1926, so she would have been around 23 at the time of this film.
  • During the recital, we see Hattori next to Noriko’s empty seat. We next see her walking down the street, looking troubled.
  • Cut to the empty hallway at home. We expect to see Noriko entering — we have just seen her! — but …
  • Surprise! It is Aya (Yumeji Tsukioka) — the “modern-girl” (she is divorced!) at the door. Noriko is not back yet. She discusses her work with Father (she’s a stenographer, not a typist!) and her ex-husband …
  • Ozu makes sure we get the point about this “modern-girl.” After sitting in the traditional Japanese posture for a few moments, she has trouble standing up because her legs fell asleep!
  • The first of three Noriko-Aya scenes where Ozu shows us Noriko at her most unguarded, natural state; Aya is an old friend and near her own age. Noriko is in a good mood; the girls hold hands, and Aya — who has been to a class reunion — gossips about old classmates. The conversation eventually turns to Noriko’s marital status — she’s one of only two classmates who remains unmarried. Noriko balks at taking advice from a divorcée. Aya counters with a baseball metaphor:
    • “I only have one out. Next time, I’ll get a run …”
    • “Still stepping up to bat?”
    • “Why not? I just struck out. Next time, I’ll crack one out of the park.”
  • The scene plays out for another few beats, as Noriko gets bread and jam, tiptoeing so as not to wake Father …
  • Cut. Kids playing baseball (nice segue!) … Noriko is visiting her aunt, who wants to meet her suitor.
    • “He looks like that American. The man in that baseball movie (Pride of the Yankees [1942]).”
    • “Gary Cooper?”
    • “That’s right, Cooper. Looks just like him.”
      • Hirano: “This line was marked for deletion by the censors, simply because he was an American actor! Perhaps because he is being referred to in a flattering way, this humorous scene survived the SCAP censors.”
  • In the middle of this scene, Noriko moves to the chair by the shoji and begins to play with a length of string. Auntie begins to talk about the possibility of Father remarrying with Akiko Miwa. By the end of the conversation, Noriko has wound the string tightly around her finger …
  • She comes home in a terrible mood and — feeling the need to avoid Father — leaves the house to “go shopping.”
  • Hattori drops by, but no one is home except the maid. He drops off a package, which contains his engagement photograph. The maid shares it with the gardener: “What a beautiful bride …”
  • 0:52:18: Noriko and Father are attending a Noh play (see the Wikipedia article for much greater detail about the play) … This scene lasts nearly seven minutes, during which time Ozu shows us all sorts of things from all kinds of different perspectives.
    • Father just loves the Noh — you can see it on Ryû’s face!
    • At one point, he sees Akiko Miwa and bows politely, but his attention is immediately drawn back to the performance (as is hers) …
    • Noriko, however, seems upset. She glares back at Akiko. She becomes agitated.
    • The Noh performance is quite beautiful. Ozu gracefully transfers the final bit of music and singing to an exterior shot of swaying trees — that wonderful Ozu “fermata.”
  • After the play, Noriko storms off to Aya’s house. In this second Noriko-Aya scene we see the opulence of Aya’s home; she has servants, etc. Picking through their conversation, Noriko asks Aya about getting a job; Aya thinks she should just get married.
    • Noriko won’t eat Aya’s shortcake. She is acting petulant. Aya: “This just shows that you need a man.”
    • Noriko storms out.
    • 1:04:04: A door slams. CU magazines falling off the chair.
  • Noriko returns home and has the conversation with her father that she has been dreading. He is going to remarry. She is devastated.
  • In the third and final Noriko-Aya scene, Noriko has calmed down. She has met the suitor, and Aya encourages her.
    • Hirano: “The American censors considered the Japanese custom of arranged marriages (miai) to be feudalistic and therefore prohibited.” All of Ozu’s Occupation-era films would have been mutilated if this attitude had prevailed.
    • Ozu 3, SCAP 0!
  • She returns home. Quietly and meekly she tells Auntie that she’ll accept. Father questions her about the decision. She answers in monosyllables and looks indescribably sad. She goes upstairs, and Father sits, contemplative. Ozu finishes the scene with a CU on Ryû, who has a totally blank expression!
  • Cut; we’re in Kyoto — rooftops, a pagoda, hillside, mountains in the distance, and the sky filling the top half of the frame.
  • CU of the four-story pagoda.
  • Onadera; Noriko seems much happier …
  • 1:24:35: Father is with Mrs. Onadera.
    • “Kyoto is so nice and relaxing. Nothing like this in Tokyo — just clouds of dust.”
      • The original line before censorship: “Tokyo is full of burned sites” (Hirano, p. 54)
  • 1:28:47. Noriko and Father are next to each other, readying for sleep.
  • Noriko is confessing her feelings. Before, she had found the idea of Onodera’s remarriage as “filthy” and “indecent.” But now she’s changed her mind.
  • Watch Ozu make screen poetry; note the rhythmic feel provided by the cut length:
    • “Father,” she begins, in a wide two-shot, a beautiful composition with the willow branches silhouetted against the white window light.
    • [13 sec] Tight CU on Noriko … “even in your case, I found the idea really distasteful.” She turns to look at him, but
    • [5 sec] Cut; he is asleep.
    • [11 sec] Back on her; she turns her head back again. She has a dreamy look on her face. Father is snoring.
    • [6 sec] Cut — the vase, empty, sitting by the window …
    • [11 sec] Cut back to Noriko. She looks satisfied and resigned …
    • [10 sec] Back to the vase (the empty vessel!). Music cue, accompanying the snoring …
    • [10 sec] Cut to a beautiful Zen rock garden, nearly empty except for three or four rocks …
    • [6 sec] Cut to CU of two or three rocks …
  • Reverse angle on Father land Onodera sitting on the steps, viewing the garden.
  • The scene is poetic because we are forced to make of these images what we will. What does it all mean? Noriko’s feelings have evolved to this point — the empty vase, Father snoring and the rock garden. Such beautiful emptiness — but look! (CU) the individual rocks … this is mu …
  • Transition: several shots of groups of rocks …
  • … to Father and Noriko packing. She tries — one last time — to see if Father will agree to just let things continue as they are. He tries to explain happiness to her.
  • Cut to a group of young boys hovering around a fancy automobile. One boy is honking the horn.
  • Cut to Father and Hattori, dressed up, smoking. The strains of “Here Comes the Bride” are combined with the honking (very nice!) …
  • 1:38:07: Father goes upstairs to see his daughter in her wedding dress. No possible description can convey the almost unbearable beauty of this scene. Both Ryû and Hara are at the absolute top of their game here — her kneeling thanks to her father is sublime.
  • A nice, naturalistic touch — Father and Noriko leave the room, but Auntie does a quick sweep around the room to make sure they hadn’t forgotten anything …
  • Three cuts of kids running around the car … and interior still, with a mirror, and a pullback cut on the same empty room. Ozu holds this for eight seconds!
  • Cut to Father and Aya, drinking at a bar.
    • We never see the actual wedding ceremony at all! We never see the man Noriko is going to marry, either!
  • Father confesses to Aya that he never had any intention of remarrying. She kisses him on the forehead.
  • Father comes home. The maid congratulates him and leaves. He is all alone. He sits down and peels an apple. The peel drops to the floor. We see his face and soul.
  • Cut to the sea, the waves rolling in.
  • The end.
Film Rating (0-60):

58

The Extras

The Booklet

Essays by critic Michael Atkinson and renowned Japanese-film historian Donald Richie.

Atkinson probes for meaning:

“It’s a cliché now to posit Ozu as the ‘most Japanese’ of that nation’s great directors, but it still seems true … but it’s not Japaneseness per se that draws us; why would it, after all? It is something more fundamental — a quintessential aspect of the medium, a breath-catching nexus of time elapsed and empathies shared. It just so happens that Ozu’s Zen-infused sensibility translates on film to something like the art form’s nascent formal beauty: patiently watching little happen, and the meditative moments around the nonhappening, until it becomes crashingly apparent that lives are at stake, and the whole world is struggling to be reborn.”

Richie, of course, wrote the book on Ozu.


His essay concerns Hara’s work:

“Her first Ozu role in Late Spring is an illustration of the dramatic dichotomy [between her earlier roles as the doomed woman — LS]. In it she is a conflicted daughter, fearful of venturing into marriage and adulthood, wanting rather to remain with the security of her father. The demands of society, on one hand, and the needs of her own emotions, on the other, are fully dramatized in a character rendered complicated, and hence interesting, because of her very typical dilemma.”

Commentary

By Richard Peña, program director of New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Excellent commentary, filled with details of Ozu’s filmography and pointing out many of the bullet points above …

Here’s a comment he makes towards the end of the commentary about the “one-film” concept:

“Jean Renoir once mentioned how directors only really make one film, and that each new work is actually  a chapter in that sort of ongoing career-long film that they’re making. I don’t think that applies to anyone more than it does to Ozu, because one really does have the sense that these films are part of an ongoing project. Their interrelationships — the way in which they often play — is variations on each other — is really, I think, a remarkable achievement for a director — one who chose, as his domain, what seems to be a limited setting, limited group of characters, limited sense of concerns — and yet, from that one vantage point, he seems to talk about the entire world; about all of experience, and that’s, I think, the sign of a great artist, who understands the infinite complexity really in the everyday.”

Film

Tokyo-Ga (1985, 92 mins.), legendary director Wim Wender’s tribute to Ozu.

Should have gotten its own Criterion release. It would have fit nicely in the “Road Trilogy” (Spine #813), even though you can’t get to Japan on an actual road!

“Anyway, Ozu’s work does not need my praise — and such a sacred treasure of the cinema could only reside in the realm of the imagination. And so, my trip to Tokyo was in no way a pilgrimage. I was curious as to whether I could still track down something from this time; whether there was still anything left of this work — images, perhaps — or even people. Or whether so much would have changed in Tokyo in the 20 years since Ozu’s death, that nothing would be left to find …”

Wender’s camera — of course — imitates Ozu’s style; low on the ground, or high up in an aerial shot of trains moving left to right and right to left — different colors — all captured without any camera movement.

A petulant young boy in the subway who simply refuses to move another step and keeps flopping to the floor. His mother patiently continues to take his hand; he moves a step or two, and then flops to the floor again. Wenders thinks of some of Ozu’s children who act the same …

One of the best moments of this film is Wender’s interview with Chishû Ryû …

“He was 30 and acting the part of a 60-year-old. The point wasn’t to act old age, but only to look old. He didn’t concern himself with anything else except looking old. Ozu always told him how to do something, and then he carried out his orders without giving it a second thought. Anyways, acting under Ozu was much less a matter of bringing discoveries and experiences to a role, than precisely carrying out Ozu’s instructions.”

He accompanies Ryû to Ozu’s grave in Kamakura. Stunning.

A long section on the making and production of fake wax-food is hypnotic …

Great conversation with Werner Herzog atop the Tokyo Tower, discussing the difficulty of finding meaningful images …


,,, twenty-something boys and girls rocking out to American rock ‘n roll — all dressed in their favorite outfits — doing the twist … remarkable!

A wonderful scene with Yûhara Atsuta, Ozu’s longtime cinematographer, shows us the set-up for Ozu’s most typical shot, using the same Mitchell camera used for many of his films — tatami-mat eye-level, with his 50mm lens …

… the stopwatch Ozu gifted to Atsuta, showing the three different marking points for seconds, amount of 35mm stock and 60mm stock shot! … amazing.

Wenders’ film ends with achingly beautiful final scenes from Tokyo Story (1953) (Spine #217) …

Extras Rating (0-40):

38

58 + 38 =

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