An Autumn Afternoon [Criterion Collection]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

Director Yasujiro Ozu's final film, and a rare outing in color for him, continues his quietly observed explorations of family dynamics in postwar Japan. Frequent Ozu star Chishu Ryu plays Shuhei Hirayama, an aging widower whose three children each depend upon him in varying degrees. The eldest, Kazuo, who is married, is a spendthrift who purchases a new set of golf clubs, then hits up his indulgent dad for a loan to buy a refrigerator. The middle child, daughter Michiko, is a 24-year-old still living at home and happy to be the domestic fulcrum between her father and her younger brother, Koichi, a willful teenager. Shuhei's conviction that Michiko isn't ready for marriage scares away a potential suitor in whom she is also interested. But the old man has a change of heart after a long drinking session with several buddies, who warn him that Michiko might wind up an old maid, trapped in the web of loneliness he knows all too well. He arranges a marriage for her, and she finds herself caught between her own desires and her duty to her father. The story ends on the late afternoon of Michiko's wedding day, as Shuhei returns to his home to face life on his own, resigned to the fact that his daughter's happiness comes before his own. ~ Tom Wiener, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Region: 1
• Number of Discs: 1
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard)
• Screen: Color
• Features:
  • New, restored high-definition digital transfer
  • Audio commentary featuring film scholar David Borwell, author of Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema
  • Excerpts from "Yasujiro Ozu and The Taste of Sake," a 1978 French television program looking back on Ozu's career, featuring critics Michel Ciment and Georges Perec
  • Theatrical trailer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • Plus: A booklet featuring new essays by film critic Geoff Andrew and film scholar Donald Richie

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Shima Iwashita - Michiko Hirayama
       Shin - Ichiro Mikami - Kazuo Hirayama
       Keiji Sada - Koichi Hirayama
       Mariko Okada - Akiko
       Nobuo Nakamura - Shuzo Kawai
       Chishu Ryu - Shuhei Hirayama
       Kuniko Miyake - Nobuko
       Teruo Yoshida - Yutaka Miura
       Michel Ciment
       Eijiro Tono - Sakuma, The "Gourd"
       Kyoko Kishida - The bar hostess
       Georges Perec
       Haruko Sugimura - Tomoko
       Daisuke Kato - Yoshitaro Sakamoto

• Director:

  Yasujiro Ozu

• Screenwriter:

  Yasujiro Ozu, Kogo Noda

• Cinematographer:

  Yushun Atsuta

• Composer (Music Score):

  Kojun Saito

• Editor:

  Yoshiyasu Hamamura

REVIEW:

• No great director confined both his subject matter and technique like Yasujiro Ozu, and this, his final film, sums up so much of what makes that tunnel vision so eloquent. As in his masterpiece, Tokyo Story, and so many other films, Ozu observes, with an amazing blend of discretion and intimacy, the tangled relationships of Japanese families. His camera barely moves, remaining for the most part at the same level, not far above the floor. His editing is leisurely, and he frequently allows scenes to play out in real time. For all of the intense emotions in his stories, there are no confrontations; however, the flickerings of disappointment and resentment across the faces of his characters speak loudly enough. Ozu veteran Chishu Ryu is once again the kindly patriarch, indulging his married son, oblivious to his teenaged boy, and caught up in a relationship of mutual dependence with his daughter. He wants to do right by her, stifling any notion of her independence, only to reverse himself when he understands how selfish his actions are. The daughter is forced to take cues from her father, resigning herself (after a failed romance) to a happy domestic life with her father and younger brother, only to learn that she is to be married after all. Rather than frame this reversal as an act of hypocrisy, Ozu prefers to see it in gently ironic terms. A widower is forced to push away the one person in his life who loves him without demands or reservation. Even if Ozu didn't foresee this as his final film, it ends on a wonderfully elegiac note. ~ Tom Wiener, Rovi