The Cinematheque

“The most beautiful Ozu movie I know.”

Roger Greenspun, The New York Times

Late Spring is one of Ozu’s finest achievements and a personal favourite of the director. Ryu Chishu portrays a widowed father worried that his adult daughter (Hara Setsuko, in her first of six collaborations with Ozu) is spurning marriage in order to continue keeping him company. Determined that she should leave the nest and have a life of her own, he lets on that he is planning to remarry, something he has absolutely no intention of doing. Late Spring is generally cited as Ozu’s first late-period masterpiece; it topped the Kinema Junpo poll as the best Japanese film of 1949. It also marked Ozu’s first collaboration in 14 years with screenwriter Noda Kogo, who would go on to co-write all his subsequent films. Japanese critic Hasumi Shiguéhiko, determined to dispel clichés of the director as a play-it-safe traditionalist, argues the film deals unequivocally in matters of sex—and taboo desires of the Oedipal variety.

In Japanese with English subtitles

“One of the best two or three films Ozu ever made.”

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

“A masterpiece … There are domestic dramas, and then there’s this.”

Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, A.V. Club