Late Spring [Criterion Collection] [2 Discs]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Veteran Japanese writer/director Yasujiro Ozu's second postwar production was 1949's Late Spring or Banshun. Chisu Ryu plays another of Ozu's realistic middle-class types, this time a widower with a marriageable daughter. Not wishing to see the girl resign herself to spinsterhood, Ryu pretends that he himself is about to be married. The game plan is to convince the daughter that they'll be no room for her at home, thus forcing her to seek comfort and joy elsewhere. What makes this homey little domestic episode work is the rapport between Chisu Ryu and Setsuko Hara, who plays the daughter. Late Spring is no facile Hollywood farce; we like these people, believe in them, and wish them the best. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 2
• Subtitle: Eng
• Screen: Black and White
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard)
• Audio: Dolby Digital Mono
• Features:
  • Disc One:
  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer
  • Audio commentary by Richard Pena, program director of New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • Disc Two:
  • Tokyo-GA (1985, 92 Mins.), legendary director Wim Wenders's tribute to Yasujiro Ozu
  • Plus: A booklet featuring new essays by critic Michael Atkinson and renowned Japanese-film historian Donald Richie

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Chishu Ryu - Shukichi Somiya

• Director:

  Yasujiro Ozu

• Screenwriter:

  Yasujiro Ozu, Kogo Noda

• Book Author:

  Kogo Noda

• Cinematographer:

  Yuharu Atsuta

• Composer (Music Score):

  Senji Ito

• Editor:

  Yoshiyasu Hamamura

REVIEW:

• Elegantly shot and quietly powerful, Late Spring is considered one of Yasujiro Ozu's finest films, along with Tokyo Story (1953) and Early Summer (1951). Like those films, Spring stars beautiful, enigmatic Setsuko Hara as Noriko, a woman reluctant to abandon her widowed father for marriage. And like most Ozu films, Spring subtly details the clash between the values of traditional Japan and those of contemporary society. Either Noriko leaves her father and enters the confining yet socially sanctioned world of marriage or she stays with him and enters the alienated labor pool like her thoroughly modernized friend Aya. Yet the film could just as easily be read as a wistful elegy to lost freedom. Though Ozu shoots the film with his trademark idiosyncratic restraint -- including wide and low camera angles, mismatched eyelines, and long shots of unpeopled spaces -- the camera is remarkably mobile during the first half of the film. Noriko is seen enjoying herself on a bicycle ride with a handsome young man and later exulting on a train trip. As Noriko progresses towards marriage, the camera confines her, echoing her own social entrapment. By the end of the film, Noriko's presence is replaced with a wedding portrait, while her father sits alone in an empty house. Late Spring is a remarkably moving film by one of world cinema's finest masters. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi