Yasujiro Ozu

Late Spring

Late Spring

One of the most powerful of Yasujiro Ozu’s family portraits, Late Spring (Banshun) tells the story of a widowed father who feels compelled to marry off his beloved only daughter. Eminent Ozu players Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara command this poignant tale of love and loss in postwar Japan, which remains as potent today as ever—and a strong justification for its maker’s inclusion in the pantheon of cinema’s greatest directors.

Film Info

  • Japan
  • 1949
  • 108 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.33:1
  • Japanese
  • Spine #331

Special Features

  • New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • Audio commentary by Richard Peña, program director of New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center
  • Tokyo-ga (1985), filmmaker Wim Wenders’s ninety-two-minute documentary about director Yasujiro Ozu
  • PLUS: essays by critic Michael Atkinson and Japanese-film historian Donald Richie, as well as Ozu’s thoughts on screenwriter Kogo Noda

    New cover by Neil Kellerhouse

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • Audio commentary by Richard Peña, program director of New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center
  • Tokyo-ga (1985), filmmaker Wim Wenders’s ninety-two-minute documentary about director Yasujiro Ozu
  • PLUS: essays by critic Michael Atkinson and Japanese-film historian Donald Richie, as well as Ozu’s thoughts on screenwriter Kogo Noda

    New cover by Neil Kellerhouse
Late Spring
Cast
Chishu Ryu
Shukichi Somiya
Setsuko Hara
Noriko Somiya
Yumeji Tsukioka
Aya Kitagawa
Haruko Sugimura
Masa Taguchi
Hohi Aoki
Katsuyoshi Taguchi
Jun Usami
Shoichi Hattori
Kuniko Miyake
Akiko Miwa
Masao Mishima
Jo Onodera
Yoshiko Tsubouchi
Kiku
Yoko Katsuragi
Misako
Toyoko Takahashi
Shige
Ichiro Shimizu
Bar owner of Takigawa
Jun Tanizaki
Seizo Hayashi
Yoko Benisawa
Teacher at tea ceremony
Credits
Director
Yasujiro Ozu
Script
Kogo Noda
Script
Yasujiro Ozu
Based on the novel by
Kazuo Hirotsu
Cinematography
Yuharu Atsuta
Producer
Takeshi Yamamoto
Art director
Tatsuo Hamada
Lighting
Haruo Isono
Editing
Yoshiyasu Hamamura
Music
Senji Ito

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Yasujiro Ozu

Writer, Director

Yasujiro Ozu
Yasujiro Ozu

Yasujiro Ozu has often been called the “most Japanese” of Japan’s great directors. From 1927, the year of his debut for Shochiku studios, to 1962, when, a year before his death at age sixty, he made his final film, Ozu consistently explored the rhythms and tensions of a country trying to reconcile modern and traditional values, especially as played out in relations between the generations. Though he is best known for his sobering 1953 masterpiece Tokyo Story, the apex of his portrayals of the changing Japanese family, Ozu began his career in the thirties, in a more comedic, though still socially astute, mode, with such films as I Was Born, But . . . and Dragnet Girl. He then gradually mastered the domestic drama during the war years and afterward, employing both physical humor, as in Good Morning, and distilled drama, as in Late Spring, Early Summer, and Floating Weeds. Though Ozu was discovered relatively late in the Western world, his trademark rigorous style—static shots, often from the vantage point of someone sitting low on a tatami mat; patient pacing; moments of transcendence as represented by the isolated beauty of everyday objects—has been enormously influential among directors seeking a cinema of economy and poetry.