Late Spring (1949)

Directed by Yasujirô Ozu. Starring Setsuko Hara, Chishû Ryû, Yumeji Tsukioka, Haruko Sugimura, Jun Usami, Hôhi Aoki, Kuniko Miyake, Yôko Katsuragi, Masao Mishima, Yoshiko Tsubouchi.

Though content cohabitating under the same roof, the lives of widowed professor Ryû and his twenty-something unmarried daughter (Hara) are irrevocably changed when his sister (Sugimura) meddles in their affairs to try and convince the daughter to find a husband and move out. Affectionate, quietly (but substantially) moving “common people drama” (shomingeki), told through understated expressions and observations in elegantly staged communal encounters and broken up by his celebrated “pillow shots,” the camera acting as an immobile and often passive witness. Had the lead characters been able to circumvent societal customs in postwar Japan, they may have ended up happy, but alas… The ending is a heartbreaker, beautifully conveyed in silence by Ozu and Ryû. The first installment in the director’s so-called “Noriko trilogy,” named as such because Hara plays a woman with that name in each film (though they’re not the same character); the other two films are Early Summer and Tokyo Story.

86/100