#209 – Tokyo Twilight, (東京暮色), 1957, Yasujirō Ozu
Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot take the truth of being abandoned as a child.
Tag: Yasujirō Ozu
#233: Floating Weeds
#233 – Floating Weeds, (浮草), 1959, Yasujirō Ozu
A troupe of travelling players arrive at a small seaport in the south of Japan. Komajuro Arashi, the aging master of the troupe, goes to visit his old flame Oyoshi and their son Kiyoshi, even though Kiyoshi believes Komajuro is his uncle. The leading actress Sumiko is jealous and so, in order to humiliate the master, persuades the younger actress Kayo to seduce Kiyoshi.
#246: Early Summer
#246 – Early Summer, (麦秋), 1951, Yasujirō Ozu
Noriko lives in postwar Tokyo with her extended family. Although she enjoys her career and her friends, her more traditionally minded family worries about the fact that she’s still single at the advanced age of 28. When 40-year-old business associate Takako proposes marriage, Noriko’s family press her into accepting. But when her widowed childhood friend Kenkichi returns to the neighborhood, she finds her heart leading in another direction.
#411: An Autumn Afternoon
#411 – An Autumn Afternoon, (秋刀魚の味), 1962, Yasujirō Ozu
Shuhei Hirayama is a widower with a 24-year-old daughter. Gradually, he comes to realize that she should not be obliged to look after him for the rest of his life, so he arranges a marriage for her.
#575: I Was Born, But…
#575 – I Was Born, But…, (大人の見る繪本 生れてはみたけれど), 1932, Yasujirō Ozu
Two young brothers become the leaders of a gang of kids in their neighborhood. Ozu’s charming film is a social satire that draws from the antics of childhood as well as the tragedy of maturity.
#684: Late Autumn
#684 – Late Autumn, (秋日和), 1960, Yasujirō Ozu
The great actress and Ozu regular Setsuko Hara plays a mother gently trying to persuade her daughter to marry in this glowing portrait of family love and conflict—a reworking of Ozu’s 1949 masterpiece Late Spring.
#877: Early Spring
#877 – Early Spring, (早春), 1956, Yasujirō Ozu
A young salary man and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he has an extramarital affair.
#918: Good Morning
#918 – Good Morning, (お早よう), 1959, Yasujirō Ozu
A lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of intergenerational relationships, Good Morning tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after their parents refuse to buy a television set. Ozu weaves a wealth of subtle gags through a family portrait as rich as those of his dramatic films, mocking the foibles of the adult world through the eyes of his child protagonists. Shot in stunning color and set in a suburb of Tokyo where housewives gossip about the neighbors’ new washing machine and unemployed husbands look for work as door-to-door salesmen, this charming comedy refashions Ozu’s own silent classic I Was Born, But… to gently satirize consumerism in postwar Japan.
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