Ozu again.

Early Spring (1956), directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Ozu is one of the truly great film makers. His work is remarkably consistent and consistently beautiful. Early Spring comes after his best-known film, Tokyo Story (1953), and it focuses on the "salaryman," a white-collar worker or office worker, the type of worker who rises early, shaves, and catches the commuter train into the city day after day. Shoji (Ryo Ikebe) is the main character. He is married to Masako (Chicago Awashima). They have had one child who has died. While on a Sunday walk in the country with fellow workers, Shoji strikes up a relationship with Goldfish, a young woman with designs on Shoji. Soon they are having an affair that puts Shoji's marriage in jeopardy. The characters are all young or middle-aged workers, employees of a fire brick manufacturing company. This film lacks the inter-generational conflicts that dominate so many of Ozu's films, but it does remain focused on family life in that the main concern is marriage. We have the signature Ozu style with static camera, clear compositional lines, especially horizontals in the way of doorways, windows, walls, corridors, narrow streets, signs, chimneys, telephone poles, and so on. As always with Ozu, we view the world from just about two or three feet above the floor or ground, except for one or two crane shots such as one showing workers walking through the bus parking lot (see below). Ozu's camera delivers a stillness that often accentuates the tensions emotions the characters try to contain. The still camera is nicely at odds with the moving of the state of things. This is post war Japan just entering the modern industrial world. To cope with this world, characters do a lot of drinking. The gathering of people to drink, party, or play mahjong is one of the many attractions of Ozu's world.

Tokyo Twilight (1957), directed by Yasujiro Ozu. There is a scene in this film that sets the tone. This scene is unlike anything I might expect from Ozu. The action takes place in a dark nightclub. People sit about in the shadows with their drinks looking moody and holding secrets. Well they look moody and secretive, not their drinks. On the rear wall is a large picture of Robert Mitchum. Yes, really. The scene plays like something from an American film noir. The police come to take a young woman away. Of course Tokyo Twilight has the trademarks of Ozu's work: unmoving camera, insistence on verticals and blocked compositions, interest in family and also generations, and a quiet insistence on the importance of everyday commonality. But this film has a darkness not often found in Ozu's work. Here we have adultery, abortion, single parenthood (both a single father and a single mother), and an apparent suicide. All this plays out in Ozu's world of narrow streets and alleys, small rooms, skylines of wires and telephone poles and signs, and so on. I found the story compelling, that is until the final 15 or 20 minutes. It is not that the final moments of the film disappoint from a narrative standpoint; it is simply that Ozu drags out the denouement far too long, or at least far too long for my patience. Make no mistake, these long moments are important and moving. It is just that they would have been more moving had they been shorter. Let me just conclude by saying this crepuscular story is well worth your attention.

Late Autumn (1960), directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Transition is once again front and centre in this gentle but compelling Ozu film. On the soundtrack I detected the strains of music from The Beggar’s Opera and at first I thought this strange. But Frances points out that despite the veneer of gentility and warmth, the knives are out in the interplay of generations and genders here. The young woman, Ayako (Yoko Tsukasa) is determined not to marry and leave her widowed mother Akiko (Setsuko Hara). She does not wish to leave her mother alone, and she does not wish to marry at the insistence of three older men who, without asking, meddle in the affairs of this mother and daughter. Ayako expresses her independence. And yet when the possibility of her mother remarrying surfaces, Ayako becomes intensely resistant. Here she follows the old ways. In other words, she is caught between the past and the future. Two thirds of the way through the film the focus shifts to a friend and co-worker of Ayako’s, Yuriko (Mariko Okada). Yuirko lets the three older gentlemen who have set out to arrange marriages just how meddling and intrusive and impertinent they are, and she does so in no uncertain terms. This is quintessential Ozu, quiet, intense, gentle but emotional, and deeply human. As always, his camera underscores the meaningful stillness of things. And as one of Ozu’s few colour films, Late Autumn never forgets that one spot of red to set thing off. The final shot is bittersweet as it rests on Akiko and her sad smile.