Late Spring [VHS]

Late Spring [VHS]
by Yasujiro Ozu

Late Spring [VHS]

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Product details

Actor: Chishu Ryu, Haruko Sugimura, Hohi Aoki, Setsuko Hara, Yumeji Tsukioka
Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Cinematographer: Yuuharu Atsuta
Writer: Yasujiro Ozu
Editor: Yoshiyasu Hamamura
Writer: Kazuo Hirotsu
Writer: K?go Noda
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Subtitled); Japanese (Original Language), Analog
Format: Black & White, Color, NTSC, Subtitled
Running Time: 108 minutes
Release Date: 1998-11-11
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: New Yorker Video
Studio: New Yorker Video

VHS Movie Reviews of Late Spring [VHS]

Movie Review: Sweet and special
Summary: 4 Stars

The year is 1949, and Noriko and her father live a happy, quiet life in rural Japan where she attends tea ceremonies and he is a professor. Friends and relatives start pestering the 27-year old woman, asking when she will marry, but Noriko likes things just the way they are.

This wonderful movie, called a "masterpiece" by many critics, is a quiet, subtle, and gentle look at the loving relationship between a father and daughter. It also captures forever post-war Japan when traditional manners and customs were practiced, kimonos were a common sight, and there were no tourists to be seen. The movie takes its time exploring Noriko's world and her reasons for not marrying; the final scenes are quite touching and universal-appealing. Recommended especially for fans of Japanese films, but this is a story that everyone can relate to. In Japanese with subtitles.

Movie Review: Serene masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars

Director Yasujiro Ozu's "Late Spring" (1949) tells the story of a widowed Japanese professor and his unmarried 27-year-old daughter, Noriko (Setsuko Hara). Noriko tends to her father and their home, joking that he couldn't make it without her. The pair seems content with this arrangement, but their friends and relatives begin to note that it's time for Noriko to marry. Noriko and her father simply laugh off this pressure, but eventually the professor's sister convinces him that Noriko cannot take care of him forever. Persuading Noriko is more difficult, and the professor may have to deceive her in order to do so.

"Late Spring" depicts the shifting societal mores in post-WWII Japan, as the younger generation started to abandon the traditional Japanese way of life. When Noriko visits her aunt, they sit on the floor wearing kimonos for a formal tea ceremony; when she visits her divorced friend, they sit perched on chairs wearing Western-style clothes and eat shortcake. The contrast is striking. Even the older generation is changing subtly, and Noriko expresses disgust when one of her father's friends remarries.

The film is a simply-told, serene masterpiece; the deliberate pace allows this unadorned story to unfold realistically. "Late Spring" is not a talky Western-style film filled with self-revelation, confessions, and epiphanies. We never hear directly from Noriko why she seems doesn't want to marry - we have to discern it from her actions and bits of dialogue. Ozu's focus on measured character development makes the movie greatly affecting. Some audiences may balk at the slow pace and the formality of "Late Spring." However, patient audiences will be richly rewarded by this beautiful tale of the sacrifices people make for their loved ones. I think this film is even better than "Tokyo Story," which many people consider to be Ozu's finest film.

Movie Review: Great
Summary: 5 Stars

If one were to think of an equivalent to the film style of director Yasujiro Ozu it would have to be long novels suffused with detail, but never superfluous detail. Books such as Herman Melville's Moby-Dick- with its descriptions of the whaling industry and vessels, John Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath- with its detailed rendering of the lives of migrant workers, and especially Betty Smith's A Tree Grows In Brooklyn- with its child-like view of a world that overwhelms fresh senses, come to mind, even though the film checks in at a mid-length range of an hour and forty-eight minutes. Ozu's cinema is utterly shorn of melodrama, for all that occurs within its frames advances some aspect of narrative, character development, or social commentary. Yet, some of the most affecting scenes in the whole of his 1949 film, Late Spring (Banshun), are realistic shots of toenail clippings or apple peels, designed to allow the viewer to feel they are intruding in on the reality of the characters. Then there are seemingly throwaway details that also lend authenticity, such as when a meter reader from the electric company comes and requires a stool to read the meter. It has nothing to do with the tale nor symbolism, but immediately `realizes' the situation for most viewers, especially when a more important character has to get the stool for the ephemeral character.
This film not only was a change in technique and tenor for Ozu, from more socially blunt works, but marked the beginning of the final phase of Ozu's long career, where his focus became almost exclusively the Japanese family unit in the post-war transition years, and his camera movement started to become more and more static with every film released. The film was penned by Ozu and longtime collaborator K?go Noda, from a novel called Father And Daughter, by Kazuo Hirotsu. The very naturalistic style of the screenplay and camera work lends an air of realism to Ozu's style that has often been compared to Italian Neo-Realism of the same era, although Ozu's work from this era was never as overtly political as that of the Italian filmmakers. The film follows the life of an aging father, a professor, Shukichi Somiya (Chishu Ryu), and his twenty-seven year old daughter, Noriko (Setsuko Hara), who still lives at home. Worried over her ending up alone, and prodded on by Noriko's aunt Masa Taguchi (Haruko Sugimura)- sister of Shukichi or his wife (it's never delineated), he tries to push his daughter out of the nest and into marital bliss. We never learn what happened to the wife and mother of the household, but we can guess she was killed in the war. We do learn that Noriko was in a labor camp and was very ill and skinny, but has now gotten healthy and plump, according to one of Shukichi's Academic colleagues, Jo Onodera (Masao Mishima), whose remarriage Noriko deems distasteful and filthy. Onodera is a jovial man, and merely one of many who seems to obsess on Noriko's marital status.... What makes Late Spring a great film is that, like great classic novels, it is never preachy nor condescending, but involving. Think of the great novels I compared it to, and then think of the crap put out in recent years by big name authors such as Joyce Carol Oates, T.C. Boyle, or Toni Morrison, and then think of this film and preachy PC films like Brokeback Mountain or Crash, and the comparative difference is manifest. Late Spring can be political when a character takes up an empty seat with his belongings or when Hara forces a smile. One need not have a character stick his tongue down another male character's throat, nor his fingers between a female characters' leg to denote the political stance of the film and filmmaker.
Then there are the terrific technical cinematographic aspects of the film- by Yuharu Atsuta, such as Ozu's patented low angle shots; eyeline mismatches; limited camera movement- such as when Noriko and Hattori go biking, yet it seems as if the world moves by them, not the other way around; the lack of interstitial fades and dissolves; as well as narrative devices, such as ellipses- as when we see Noriko's devastation at her father's supposed remarriage, and then transition to her seemingly positive and happy reaction to meeting `Gary Cooper;' and transition shots of unidentified locations to link themes and elided time intervals. In many ways, the camera of Ozu frames life similarly to that of Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer, or the great Dutch painting masters, where space, the tension built by spare movement, and the relative positioning of characters is all important.
Ozu has tritely been labeled the most Japanese of all directors by lazy critics, as opposed to his two great contemporaries- Kenji Mizoguchi and the far more famous Akira Kurosawa, both of whose reputations were made with historical dramas, but Ozu is actually the most modern of all the classic directors from Japan, and probably the most Western, if not in approach then in attitude. Late Spring shows this to be true, and considering that the film was a distinct reinvention of the man's art, its success is all the more noteworthy. It's akin to a minor dime store novelist from the late 19th Century all of a sudden morphing into Mark Twain. Were most midlife crises handled as ably- nay, greatly- as this the work of such an artist as Yasujiro Ozu would not be needed to illumine the problem. It almost makes one wish for the human race to be continued to be plagued with ills, for only then will the relevance of such artistic rendering still be appreciated, right along with the greatest of novels and novelists.
And the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago....

Movie Review: Fathers and Daughters, Love and Marriage
Summary: 5 Stars

Many of Ozu's films are variations on a theme. He would take essentially the same characters, and essentially the same them, but run them through a different set of circumstances. Always about the family, sometimes he would focus on the sons, sometimes the mother, sometimes the father, and sometimes the daughter. When the daughter is involved, there are sure to be prospects of marriage.

"Late Spring" ("Banshun") is a Father/Daughter play, focusing on the relationship that can develop when a widower father is being tended to by his single daughter. Both are happy with the relationship, and love each other, but know deep down that the daughter must leave to live her own life, that happiness cannot be found only in being a dutiful child, but that a woman can also be a wife, a lover, a mother and many other things that are closed to her when she takes on the role of platonic wife and caregiver to her father. The father must free the caged bird that his is daughter, even though it will decrease his own happiness. He knows she will never leave on her own, so he devises a plot that he will re-marry, and that he doesn't need her anymore.

The usual cast is assembled. Ryu Chishu is the father in this movie, as he would be again in Tokyo Story, although he was the older brother in the similar-themed Early Summer. Hara Setsuko is, of course, the loving and perfect daughter Noriko, the same name her character would take in almost every Ozu film. These two are the consummate Ozu actors, able to realize his vision and themes so fluidly and naturally it is impossible to see anyone else in their roles.

As usual, Ozu's genius with imagery and subtly is beautiful to behold. Two people walking by a Coca Cola sign becomes so much more, even though nothing overt must be said. The unspoken element is far more important than the dialog, and all the still waters of the surface churn with hidden depths and struggles. The new subtitles by Kerim Yasar are a perfect vehicle for non-Japanese speakers to connect with the story. Very little is lost in translation, and it is a good collaboration between the two.

This Criterion DVD also contains the documentary Tokyo-Ga, directed by Wim Wenders. Not specific to "Late Spring", it seeks the world of Ozu, visiting locations and interviewing old cast members to try and understand the simple secrets. It is an excellent addition, and sets a good stage for those who have never seen Ozu before, but would like to know more.

Movie Review: A giant film that exudes humanity!
Summary: 5 Stars

Yasujiro Ozu proves once again, why he was the most sensitive Japanese poet in what familiar relationships concern. His films are like a set of Haikus, plenty of filial and disinterested love.

A wealthy, old and widowed father (56) is really worried about the destiny of his own daughter (24) because he is aware about the huge devotion she feels for him. But the years will pass and someday she will have to find a man in order to get marry. He knows it and although all his advises, she remains indifferent. That is why knowing she became maid in a recent future, he will make the best he can to find for her a good man capable to deserve her.

The sake on the other hand, is an affective illusion, a relief for his loneliness and hopeless due he is aware the end is near.

As we may expect both affective lines will intersect conveying us to find the meaning and profound transcendence of love in our lives.

An intense, haunting and poignant film that must be seen keeping in mind the poetic atmosphere that will permeate the movie from start to finish.

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Summary of Late Spring [VHS]

A masterpiece of postwar Japanese cinema, Yasujiro Ozu's Late Spring serves as an elegant primer for many of the themes that would define Ozu's later career. As with other Ozu classics, this is a calm, meditative drama about the dynamics of family, in this case the inevitable separation of 56-year-old father and widower Shukichi (Chishu Ryu) and his adult daughter Noriko (Setsuko Hara), who is content to care for her father and remain unmarried, despite the urging of friends and relatives to find a suitable husband. There are some viable candidates, and several attempts at matchmaking, but the likeliest match is a man who's already engaged. Noriko simply wishes for things to remain as they are, but when she does eventually marry a handsome chemist who "looks like Gary Cooper," Ozu's drama remains intimately focused on the subtle emotions at play; there's not a scene or sequence that feels out of place, and Late Spring serves a secondary function as a light and lively portrait of post-war Japan, as hints of Western influence (like a Coca-Cola sign in one of the film's most memorable scenes) that signal Japan's transition toward a modern commercial economy. Most of all, however, Late Spring is a carefully observed and quietly heartbreaking story of a parent who yearns to set things right for his daughter who must balance her father's love with her own prospects for a fulfilling future. And while Ozu would go on to examine familial issues in later, equally noteworthy films, Late Spring represents a milestone that would ensure Ozu his rightful place among the greatest of all Japanese directors. --Jeff Shannon

On the DVDs
Criterion's release of Late Spring contains a few minor flaws in terms of image quality (such as occasional emulsion scratches), but viewers can rest assured that this DVD was mastered from the finest available materials, and the film looks very good considering the conditions of post-war Japan that were typically harsh on films of that period. The "windowbox" framing format accurately preserves the film's original 1.33:1 aspect ratio. There's a new and improved English subtitle translation, and the audio commentary by Richard Pe?a (an Ozu expert and program director of New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center) emphasizes the literary traditions that inform Ozu's films, in addition to the director's signature fixed-camera, low-angle style. Disc 2 includes Tokyo-ga, the 1985 feature by German director (and avid Ozu admirer) Wim Wenders. It's a tribute to Ozu's Japan, in which Wenders wanders the city searching for remnants of Tokyo as seen in Ozu's films, including interviews with Late Spring actor Chishu Ryu and Ozu's long-time cameraman Yuharu Atsuta. In keeping with Criterion tradition, a 21-page booklet is also included, containing informative essays by critic Michael Atkinson and renowned Japanese-film historian Donald Richie. --Jeff Shannon

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