The Cinematheque

The final film of unsung auteur Shimizu Hiroshi is a moving domestic drama in the register of Ozu Yasujiro, the director’s lifelong friend and occasional collaborator. (Shimizu co-wrote the script for Ozu’s I Graduated, But…, which starred Shimizu’s then-wife Tanaka Kinuyo.) The tender gendai-geki follows the evolving relationship between a motherless boy, for whom a carrier pigeon is companion, and the new bride (Awashima Chikage) of his ferryboat-captain father. Characteristic of Shimizu’s formal designs, much of the drama is choreographed to the lateral moves of the camera; the rhythmic pas de deux of static and tracking shots plays to maximum effect thanks to the newly introduced widescreen format in Japan, adopted only two years prior. Though little of this farewell film is known in the West, the National Film Archive of Japan, instrumental to this year’s stateside Shimizu retrospective, counts it among the director’s supreme achievements.

In Japanese with English subtitles

DCP courtesy of Japan Society, New York