Late Spring
Late Spring is a 1949 Japanese drama film directed by Yasujirō Ozu and written by Ozu and Kogo Noda, based on the short novel Father and Daughter by the 20th-century novelist and critic Kazuo Hirotsu. The film was written and shot during the Allied Powers' Occupation of Japan and was subject to the Occupation's official censorship requirements. It stars Chishū Ryū, who was featured in almost all of the director’s films, and Setsuko Hara, marking her first of six appearances in Ozu’s work. It is the first installment of Ozu’s so-called “Noriko trilogy”—the others are Early Summer and Tokyo Story —in each of which Hara portrays a young woman named Noriko, though the three Norikos are distinct, unrelated characters, linked primarily by their status as single women in postwar Japan.
Late Spring belongs to the type of Japanese film known as shomingeki, a genre that deals with the ordinary daily lives of working class and middle class people of modern times. The film is frequently regarded as the first in the director’s final creative period, "the major prototype of the 1950s and 1960s work." These films are characterized by, among other traits, an exclusive focus on stories about families during Japan's immediate postwar era, a tendency towards very simple plots and the use of a generally static camera.
Late Spring was released on September 19, 1949 to critical acclaim in the Japanese press. In the following year, it was awarded the prestigious Kinema Junpo critics' award as the best Japanese production released in 1949. In 1972, the film was commercially released in the United States, again to very positive reviews. Late Spring has been referred to as the director's "most perfect" work, as "the definitive film of Ozu's master filmmaking approach and language" and has been called "one of the most perfect, most complete, and most successful studies of character ever achieved in Japanese cinema." In the 2012 version of Sight & Sound decennial poll of "The Greatest Films of All Time", published by the British Film Institute, Late Spring appears as the second highest-ranking Japanese-language film on the list at number 15, behind Ozu's own Tokyo Story at number 3.
Plot
The film opens at a tea ceremony.Professor Shukichi Somiya, a widower, has only one child, a twenty-seven-year-old unmarried daughter, Noriko, who takes care of the household and the everyday needs—cooking, cleaning, mending, etc.—of her father. On a shopping trip to Tokyo, Noriko encounters one of her father's friends, Professor Jo Onodera, who lives in Kyoto. Noriko knows that Onodera, who had been a widower like her father, has recently remarried, and she tells him that she finds the very idea of his remarriage distasteful, even "filthy." Onodera, and later her father, tease her for having such thoughts.
as Noriko and Chishū Ryū as Shukichi in Late Spring |alt=Two seated Japanese persons in traditional dress: to the left, a young woman with dark hair facing right; to the right, an elderly looking gentleman with gray hair, looking at the woman. They are sitting on futons and a shoji screen is in the background.
Shukichi's sister, Aunt Masa, convinces him that it is high time his daughter got married. Noriko is friendly with her father’s assistant, Hattori, and Aunt Masa suggests that her brother ask Noriko if she might be interested in Hattori. When he does bring up the subject, however, Noriko laughs: Hattori has been engaged to another young woman for quite some time.
Undaunted, Masa pressures Noriko to meet with a marriageable young man, a Tokyo University graduate named Satake who, Masa believes, bears a strong resemblance to Gary Cooper. Noriko declines, explaining that she does not wish to marry anyone, because to do so would leave her father alone and helpless. Masa surprises Noriko by claiming that she is also trying to arrange a match between Shukichi and Mrs. Miwa, an attractive young widow known to Noriko. If Masa succeeds, Noriko would have no excuse.
At a Noh performance attended by Noriko and her father, the latter smilingly greets Mrs. Miwa, which triggers Noriko's jealousy. When her father later tries to talk her into going to meet Satake, he tells her that he intends to marry Mrs. Miwa. Devastated, Noriko reluctantly decides to meet the young man and, to her surprise, has a very favorable impression of him. Under pressure from all sides, Noriko consents to the arranged marriage.
The Somiyas go on one last trip together before the wedding, visiting Kyoto. There they meet Professor Onodera and his family. Noriko changes her opinion of Onodera's remarriage when she discovers that his new wife is a nice person. While packing their luggage for the trip home, Noriko asks her father why they cannot simply stay as they are now, even if he does remarry – she cannot imagine herself any happier than living with and taking care of him. Shukichi admonishes her, saying that she must embrace the new life she will build with Satake, one in which he, Shukichi, will have no part, because "that’s the order of human life and history." Noriko asks her father’s forgiveness for her "selfishness" and agrees to go ahead with the marriage.
Noriko’s wedding day arrives. At home just before the ceremony, both Shukichi and Masa admire Noriko, who is dressed in a traditional wedding costume. Noriko thanks her father for the care he has taken of her throughout her life and leaves in a hired car for the wedding. Afterwards, Aya, a divorced friend of Noriko’s, goes with Shukichi to a bar, where he confesses that his claim that he was going to marry Mrs. Miwa was a ruse to persuade Noriko to get married herself. Aya, touched by his sacrifice, promises to visit him often. Shukichi returns home alone.
Cast
Production
The Occupation censorship
Censorship problems with ''Late Spring''
The central event of Late Spring is the marriage of the heroine to a man she has met only once through a single arranged meeting. This immediately presented a problem for the censors of the American Occupation. According to film scholar Kyoko Hirano, these officials "considered feudalistic the Japanese custom of arranged meetings for prospective marriage partners, miai, because the custom seemed to them to downgrade the importance of the individual." Hirano notes that, had this policy against showing arranged marriages onscreen been rigidly enforced, Late Spring could never have been made. In the original synopsis, Noriko’s decision to marry was presented as a collective family decision, not an individual choice, and the censors apparently rejected this.The synopsis explained that the trip to Kyoto by father and daughter, just prior to Noriko’s marriage, occurs so she can visit her dead mother’s grave. This motivation is absent from the finished film, possibly because the censors would have interpreted such a visit as “ancestor worship,” a practice they frowned upon.
Any reference in the script to the devastation caused by the Allied bombings was removed. In the script, Shukichi remarks to Onodera’s wife in Kyoto that her city is a very nice place, unlike Tokyo, with all its ruins. The censors deleted the reference to ruins and, in the finished film, the word “hokorippoi” was substituted as a description of Tokyo.
The censors at first automatically deleted a reference in the script to the Hollywood star Gary Cooper, but then reinstated it when they realized that the comparison was to Noriko’s suitor Satake, who is described by the female characters as attractive, and was thus flattering to the American actor.
Sometimes, the censors’ demands seemed irrational. A line about Noriko’s health having been negatively affected by "her work after being conscripted by the Navy during the war" was changed to "the forced work during the war," as if even the very mention of the Japanese Navy was somehow suspect.
At the script phase of the censorship process, the censors demanded that the character of Aunt Masa, who at one point finds a lost change purse on the ground and keeps it as a kind of good-luck charm, should be shown handing over the purse to the police. Ozu responded by turning the situation, in the finished film, into a kind of running gag in which Shukichi repeatedly urges his sister to turn the purse in to the police. This change has been called "a mocking kind of partial compliance with the censorship."
Ozu's alleged "subversion" of censorship
One scholar, Lars-Martin Sorensen, has claimed that Ozu's partial aim in making the film was to present an ideal of Japan at odds with that which the Occupation wanted to promote, and that he successfully subverted the censorship in order to accomplish this. "The controversial and subversive politico-historical 'message' of the film is… that the beauty of tradition, and of subjugation of individual whims to tradition and history, by far outshines the imported and imposed western trends of occupied Japan."Sorensen uses as an example the scene early in the film in which Noriko and her father's assistant Hattori are bicycling towards the beach. They pass a diamond-shaped Coca-Cola sign and another sign, in English, warning that the weight capacity of a bridge over which they are riding is 30 tons: quite irrelevant information for this young couple, but perfectly appropriate for American military vehicles that might pass along that road. Sorensen argues that these objects are "obvious reference to the presence of the occupying army."
On the other hand, Late Spring, more than any other film Ozu made, is suffused with the symbols of Japanese tradition: the tea ceremony that opens the film, the temples at Kamakura, the Noh performance that Noriko and Shukichi witness, and the landscape and Zen gardens of Kyoto. Sorensen argues that these images of historical landmarks "were intended to inspire awe and respect for the treasures of ancient Japan in contrast to the impurity of the present." Sorensen also claims that, to Ozu’s audience, "the exaltation of Japanese tradition and cultural and religious heritage must have brought remembrances of the good old days when Japan was still winning her battles abroad and nationalism reached its peak." To scholars such as Bordwell who assert that Ozu was promoting with this film an ideology that could be called liberal, Sorensen argues that contemporary reviews of the film "show that Ozu was considered inseparable from his films, and that he was considered a conservative purist."
Sorensen concludes that such censorship may not necessarily be a bad thing. "One of the positive side effects of being prohibited from airing one's views openly and directly is that it forces artists to be creative and subtle in their ways of expression."
Narrative, themes and characterization
Narrative strategies
The films of Yasujirō Ozu are well known for their unusual approach to film narrative. Scenes that most filmmakers would consider obligatory are often not shown at all, while apparently extraneous incidents are given seemingly inordinate prominence. Sometimes important narrative information is withheld not only from a major character, but from the viewer, such as the news of Hattori’s engagement, about which neither Noriko’s father nor the audience has any knowledge until Noriko, laughing, informs him. And at times, the filmmaker proceeds, within a scene, to jump from one time frame to another without transition, as when two establishing shots of some travelers waiting for a train on a platform lead to a third shot of the same train already on its way to Tokyo."Parametric" narrative theory
Bordwell refers to Ozu’s approach to narrative as "parametric narration." By this term, Bordwell means that Ozu’s "overunified" visual approach, characterized by its “stylistic rigor,” often provides the basis for "playful deviation," including narrative playfulness. As Bordwell puts it somewhat more plainly, Ozu "back away from his own machinery in order to achieve humor and surprise." In his view, "in narrative poetry, rhythm and rhyme need not completely subordinate themselves to the demand of telling the story; in art song or opera, 'autonomous' musical structures may require that the story grind to a halt while particular harmonic or melodic patterns work themselves out. Similarly, in some films, temporal or spatial qualities can lure us with a patterning that is not wholly dependent on representing fabula information."Bordwell points out that the opening scene of Late Spring "begins at the railroad station, where the characters aren’t. A later scene will do exactly the same thing, showing the train station before showing already hurtling towards Tokyo… In Tokyo, Onodera and Noriko discuss going to an art exhibit; cut to a sign for the exhibit, then to the steps of the art gallery; cut to the two in a bar, after they’ve gone to the exhibit."
"Essentialist" narrative theory
To Kathe Geist, Ozu’s narrative methods reflect the artist's economy of means, not "playfulness." "His frequent use of repetition and ellipsis do not 'impose their will' on Ozu’s plots; they are his plots. By paying attention to what has been left out and to what is repeated, one arrives at Ozu’s essential story."As an example, Geist cites the scene in which Noriko and Hattori bicycle together to the beach and have a conversation there, an incident that appears to imply a budding romantic relationship between them. When Noriko slightly later reveals to her father that Hattori, before that bicycle trip, had already been engaged to another woman, "we wonder", writes Geist, "why Ozu has wasted so much time on the 'wrong man' ." However, the key to the beach scene’s importance to the plot, according to Geist, is the dialogue between Hattori and Noriko, in which the latter tells him that she is "the jealous type." This seemingly unlikely claim, given her affable nature, is later confirmed when she becomes bitterly jealous at her father’s apparent plan to remarry. "Her jealousy goads her into her own marriage and is thus the pivot on which the plot turns."
Geist sums up her analysis of several major Ozu films of the postwar period by asserting that "the narratives unfold with an astounding precision in which no shot and certainly no scene is wasted and all is overlayered with an intricate web of interlocking meaning."
Major themes
The following represents what some critics regard as important themes in this film.Marriage
The main theme of Late Spring is marriage: specifically, the persistent attempts by several characters in the film to get Noriko married. The marriage theme was a topical one for Japanese of the late 1940s. On January 1, 1948, a new law had been issued which allowed young people over twenty to marry consensually without parental permission for the first time. The Japanese Constitution of 1947 had made it much easier for a wife to divorce her husband; up until that time, it had been "difficult, almost impossible" to do so. Several commentators have pointed out that one reason why Noriko is still unmarried at the relatively late age of 27 is that many of the young men of her generation had been killed in the Second World War, leaving far fewer eligible potential partners for single young women.Marriage in this film, as well as many of Ozu’s late films, is strongly associated with death. Prof. Onodera's daughter, for example, refers to marriage as "life’s graveyard." Geist writes: "Ozu connects marriage and death in obvious and subtle ways in most of his late films… The comparison between weddings and funerals is not merely a clever device on Ozu’s part, but is so fundamental a concept in Japanese culture that these ceremonies as well as those surrounding births have built-in similarities… The elegiac melancholy Ozu evokes at the end of Late Spring, Late Autumn, and An Autumn Afternoon arises only partly because the parents have been left alone… The sadness arises because the marriage of the younger generation inevitably reflects on the mortality of the older generation." Robin Wood stresses the marriage-death connection in commenting on the scene that takes place in the Somiya home just before the wedding ceremony. "After everyone has left the room… ends the sequence with a shot of the empty mirror. Noriko is no longer even a reflection, she has disappeared from the narrative, she is no longer ‘Noriko’ but ‘wife.’ The effect is that of a death."
Tradition vs. modernity
The tension between tradition and modern pressures in relation to marriage—and, by extension, within Japanese culture as a whole—is one of the major conflicts Ozu portrays in the film. Sorensen indicates by several examples that what foods a character eats or even how he or she sits down reveals the relationship of that character to tradition. According to Peña, Noriko "is the quintessential moga—modan gaaru, 'modern girl'—that populates Japanese fiction, and really the Japanese imagination, beginning in the 1920s onward." Throughout most of the film, Noriko wears Western clothing rather than a kimono, and outwardly behaves in up-to-date ways. However, Bordwell asserts that "Noriko is more old-fashioned than her father, insisting that he could not get along without her and resenting the idea that a widower might remarry… she clings to an outmoded notion of propriety."The other two important female characters in the film are also defined in terms of their relation to tradition. Noriko’s Aunt Masa appears in scenes in which she is associated with traditional Japan, such as the tea ceremony in one of the ancient temples of Kamakura. Noriko’s friend Aya, on the other hand, seems to reject tradition entirely. Aya had taken advantage of the new liberal divorce laws to end her recent marriage. Thus, she is presented as a new, Westernized phenomenon: the divorcee. She "takes English tea with milk from teacups with handles, also bakes shortcake," a very un-Japanese type of food.
Like Noriko, her father has an ambiguous relation with modernity. Shukichi is first seen in the film checking the correct spelling of the name of the German-American economist Friedrich List—an important transitional figure during Japan’s Meiji era. Prof. Somiya treats Aya, the divorcee, with unfailing courtesy and respect, implying a tolerant, "modern" attitude—though one critic suspects that a man of Shukichi's class and generation in the real-life Japan of that period might have been considerably less tolerant.
However, like Aunt Masa, Shukichi is also associated with the traditions of old Japan, such as the city of Kyoto with its ancient temples and Zen rock gardens, and the Noh play that he so clearly enjoys. Most importantly, he pressures Noriko to go through with the miai meeting with Satake, though he makes clear to her that she can reject her suitor without negative consequences.
Sorensen has summed up the ambiguous position of both father and daughter in relation to tradition as follows: "Noriko and Somiya interpolate between the two extremes, between shortcake and Nara-pickles, between ritually prepared green tea and tea with milk, between love marriage/divorce and arranged marriage, between Tokyo and Nara. And this interpolation is what makes them complex characters, wonderfully human in all their internal inconsistencies, very Ozu-like and likable indeed."
The home
Late Spring has been seen by some commentators as a transitional work in terms of the home as a recurring theme in Japanese cinema. Tadao Sato points out that Shochiku’s directors of the 1920s and 1930s—including Shimazu, Gosho, Mikio Naruse and Ozu himself—"presented the family in a tense confrontation with society." In A Brother and His Young Sister by Shimazu, for example, "the home is sanctified as a place of warmth and generosity, feelings that were rapidly vanishing in society." By the early 1940s, however, in such films as Ozu’s There Was a Father, "the family completely subordinate to the state" and "society is now above criticism." But when the military state collapsed as a result of Japan’s defeat in the war, the idea of the home collapsed with it: "Neither the nation nor the household could dictate morality any more."Sato considers Late Spring to be "the next major development in the home drama genre," because it "initiated a series of Ozu films with the theme: there is no society, only the home. While family members had their own places of activity—office, school, family business—there was no tension between the outside world and the home. As a consequence, the home itself lost its source of moral strength." Yet despite the fact that these home dramas by Ozu "tend to lack social relevance," they "came to occupy the mainstream of the genre and can be considered perfect expressions of 'my home-ism,' whereby one’s family is cherished to the exclusion of everything else."
The season and sexuality
Late Spring is the first of several extant Ozu films with a "seasonal" title., Late Autumn and The End of Summer ). The "late spring" of the title refers on the most obvious level to Noriko who, at 27, is in the "late spring" of her life, and approaching the age at which she would no longer be considered marriageable.scene: Noriko is consumed with jealousy because her father has just silently greeted the attractive widow, Mrs. Miwa |alt=A theatre at which a Noh play is being performed: Prof. Somiya is wearing a business suit and tie and Noriko is wearing a simple, Western-style dress with a collar; Shukichi is looking straight ahead towards the left frame of the picture, smiling, and Noriko, not smiling, is looking toward the right frame of the picture towards an unseen person.
However, there may be another meaning to Ozu's title derived from ancient Japanese culture. When Noriko and Shukichi attend the Noh play, the work performed is called Kakitsubata or "The Water Iris." In this play, a traveling monk arrives at a place called Yatsuhashi, famous for its water irises, when a woman appears. She alludes to a famous poem by the waka poet of the Heian period, Ariwara no Narihira, in which each of the five lines begins with one syllable that, spoken together, spell out the word for "water iris". The monk stays the night at the humble hut of the woman, who then appears in an elaborate kimono and headdress and reveals herself to be the spirit of the water iris. She praises Narihira, dances and at dawn receives enlightenment from the Buddha and disappears.
As Norman Holland explains in an essay on the film, "the iris is associated with late spring, the movie’s title", and the play contains a great deal of sexual and religious symbolism. The iris' leaves and flower are traditionally seen as representing the male and female genitalia, respectively. The play itself is traditionally seen, according to Holland, as "a tribute to the union of man and woman leading to enlightenment."
Noriko calmly accepts this sexual content when couched in the "archaic" form of Noh drama, but when she sees her father nod politely to the attractive widow, Mrs. Miwa, who is also in the audience, "that strikes Noriko as outrageous and outraging. Had this woman and her father arranged to meet at this play about sexuality? Is this remarriage 'filthy' like remarriage? She feels both angry and despairing. She is so mad at her father that, quite uncharacteristically, she angrily walks away from him after they leave the theater." Holland thus sees one of the film's main themes as "the pushing of traditional and inhibited Noriko into marriage."
Major characters
Late Spring has been particularly praised for its focus on character, having been cited as "one of the most perfect, most complete, and most successful studies of character ever achieved in Japanese cinema." Ozu’s complex approach to character can best be examined through the two protagonists of the film: Noriko Somiya and her father, Shukichi.Noriko Somiya
Noriko, at 27, is an unmarried, unemployed young woman, completely dependent financially upon her father and living quite contently with him. Her two most important traits, which are interrelated, are her unusually close and affectionate relationship with her father and her extreme reluctance to marry and leave home. Of the first trait, the relationship between father and daughter has been described as a "transgenerational friendship," in which there is nevertheless no hint of anything incestuous or even inappropriate. However, it has been conceded that this may primarily be due to cultural differences between Japan and the West and that, were the story remade in the West, such a possible interpretation couldn’t be evaded. The second trait, her strong aversion to the idea of marriage, has been seen, by some commentators, in terms of the Japanese concept of amae, which in this context signifies the strong emotional dependence of a child on its parent, which can persist into adulthood. Thus, the rupturing of the father-adult daughter relationship in Late Spring has been interpreted as Ozu’s view of the inevitability—and necessity—of the termination of the amae relationship, although Ozu never glosses over the pain of such a rupture.There has been considerable difference of opinion amongst commentators regarding the complicated personality of Noriko. She has been variously described as like a wife to her father, or as like a mother to him; as resembling a petulant child; or as being an enigma, particularly as to the issue of whether or not she freely chooses to marry. Even the common belief of film scholars that she is an upholder of conservative values, because of her opposition to her father’s remarriage plans, has been challenged. Robin Wood, writing about the three Norikos as one collective character, states that "Noriko" "has managed to retain and develop the finest humane values which the modern capitalist world… tramples underfoot—consideration, emotional generosity, the ability to care and empathize, and above all, awareness."
Prof. Shukichi Somiya
Noriko’s father, Shukichi, works as a college professor and is the sole breadwinner of the Somiya family. It has been suggested that the character represents a transition from the traditional image of the Japanese father to a very different one. Sato points out that the national prewar ideal of the father was that of the stern patriarch, who ruled his family lovingly, but with an iron hand. Ozu himself, however, in several prewar films, such as I Was Born, But… and Passing Fancy, had undercut, according to Sato, this image of the archetypal strong father by depicting parents who were downtrodden "salarymen", or poor working-class laborers, who sometimes lost the respect of their rebellious children. Bordwell has noted that "what is remarkable about Ozu's work of the 1920s and 1930s is how seldom the patriarchal norm is reestablished at the close ."The character of Prof. Somiya represents, according to this interpretation, a further evolution of the “non-patriarchal” patriarch. Although Shukichi wields considerable moral influence over his daughter through their close relationship, that relationship is "strikingly nonoppressive." One commentator refers to Shukichi and his friend, Professor Onodera, as men who are "very much at peace, very much aware of themselves and their place in the world," and are markedly different from stereotypes of fierce Japanese males promulgated by American films during and after the World War.
It has been claimed that, after Noriko accepts Satake’s marriage proposal, the film ceases to be about her, and that Prof. Somiya at that point becomes the true protagonist, with the focus of the film shifting to his increasing loneliness and grief. In this regard, a plot change that the filmmakers made from the original source material is significant. In the novel by Kazuo Hirotsu, the father’s announcement to his daughter that he wishes to marry a widow is only initially a ruse; eventually, he actually does get married again. Ozu and his co-screenwriter, Noda, deliberately rejected this "witty" ending, in order to show Prof. Somiya as alone and inconsolable at the end.
Style
Ozu's unique style has been widely noted by critics and scholars. Some have considered it an anti-Hollywood style, as he eventually rejected many conventions of Hollywood filmmaking. Some aspects of the style of Late Spring—which also apply to Ozu's late-period style in general, as the film is typical in almost all respects—include Ozu's use of the camera, his use of actors, his idiosyncratic editing and his frequent employment of a distinctive type of shot that some commentators have called a "pillow shot."Interpretations
Like many celebrated works of cinema, Late Spring has inspired varied and often contradictory critical and scholarly interpretations. The two most common interpretations of Late Spring are: a) the view that the film represents one of a series of Ozu works that depict part of a universal and inevitable "life cycle", and is thus either duplicated or complemented by other Ozu works in the series; b) the view that the film, while similar in theme and even plot to other Ozu works, calls for a distinct critical approach, and that the work is in fact critical of marriage, or at least the particular marriage depicted in it.The film as part of "life cycle" series
Ozu’s films, both individually and collectively, are often seen as representing either a universal human life cycle or a portion of such a cycle. Ozu himself at least once spoke in such terms. "I wanted in this picture to show a life cycle. I wanted to depict mutability. I was not interested in action for its own sake. And I’ve never worked so hard in my life."Those who hold this interpretation argue that this aspect of Ozu's work gives it its universality, and helps it transcend the specifically Japanese cultural context in which the films were created. Bock writes: "The subject matter of the Ozu film is what faces all of us born of man and woman and going on to produce offspring of our own: the family… may be applied to Ozu’s works and create an illusion of peculiar Japaneseness, but in fact behind the words are the problems we all face in a life cycle. They are the struggles of self-definition, of individual freedom, of disappointed expectations, of the impossibility of communication, of separation and loss brought about by the inevitable passages of marriage and death." Bock suggests that Ozu’s wish to portray the life cycle affected his decisions on technical matters, such as the construction and use of the sets of his films. "In employing the set like a curtainless stage Ozu allows for implication of transitoriness in the human condition. Allied with the other aspects of ritual in Ozu's techniques, it reinforces the feeling that we are watching a representative life cycle."
According to Geist, Ozu wished to convey the concept of sabi, which she defines as “an awareness of the ephemeral”: "Much of what is ephemeral is also cyclical; thus, sabi includes an awareness of the cyclical, which is evinced both formally and thematically in Ozu’s films. Often, they revolve around passages in the human life cycle, usually the marriage of a child or the death of a parent." She points out scenes that are carefully duplicated in Late Spring, evoking this cyclical theme: "Noriko and her father’s friend sit in a bar and talk about remarriage, which Noriko condemns. In the film’s penultimate sequence, the father and Noriko’s friend Aya sit in a bar after Noriko’s wedding. The scene is shot from exactly the same angles as was the first bar scene, and again the subject is remarriage."
The film as a critique of marriage
A critical tendency opposing the "life cycle" theory emphasizes the differences in tone and intent between this film and other Ozu works that deal with similar themes, situations and characters. These critics are also highly skeptical of the widely held notion that Ozu regarded marriage favorably. As critic Roger Ebert explains, "Late Spring began a cycle of Ozu films about families... Did he make the same film again and again? Not at all. Late Spring and Early Summer are startlingly different. In the second, Noriko takes advantage of a conversational opening to overturn the entire plot... she accepts a man she has known for a long time—a widower with a child." In contrast, "what happens at deeper levels is angry, passionate and—wrong, we feel, because the father and the daughter are forced to do something neither one of them wants to do, and the result will be resentment and unhappiness." Ebert goes on, "It is universally believed, just as in a Jane Austen novel, that a woman of a certain age is in want of a husband. Late Spring is a film about two people who desperately do not believe this, and about how they are undone by their tact, their concern for each other, and their need to make others comfortable by seeming to agree with them." The film "tells a story that becomes sadder the more you think about it."Late Spring, in Wood's view, "is about the sacrifice of Noriko’s happiness in the interest of maintaining and continuing 'tradition,' takes the form of her marriage, and everyone in the film—including the father and finally the defeated Noriko herself—is complicit in it." He asserts that, in contradiction to the view of many critics, the film "is not about a young woman trying nobly to sacrifice herself and her own happiness in order dutifully to serve her widowed father in his lonely old age," because her life as a single young woman is one she clearly prefers: "With her father, Noriko has a freedom that she will never again regain." He points out that there is an unusual degree of camera movement in the first half of the film, as opposed to the "stasis" of the second half, and that this corresponds to Noriko’s freedom in the first half and the "trap" of her impending marriage in the second. Rather than perceiving the Noriko films as a cycle, Wood asserts that the trilogy is "unified by its underlying progressive movement, a progression from the unqualified tragedy of Late Spring through the ambiguous 'happy ending' of Early Summer to the authentic and fully earned note of bleak and tentative hope at the end of Tokyo Story."
Reception and legacy
Reception and reputation of the film in Japan
Late Spring was released in Japan on September 19, 1949. Basing his research upon files kept on the film by the Allied censorship, Sorensen notes: "Generally speaking, was hailed with enthusiasm by Japanese critics when it opened at theaters." The publication Shin Yukan, in its review of September 20, emphasized the scenes that take place in Kyoto, describing them as embodying "the calm Japanese atmosphere" of the entire work. Both Shin Yukan and another publication, Tokyo Shinbun, considered the film beautiful and the former called it a "masterpiece." There were, however, some cavils: the critic of Asahi Shinbun complained that "the tempo is not the feeling of the present period" and the reviewer from Hochi Shinbun warned that Ozu should choose more progressive themes, or else he would "coagulate."In 1950, the film became the fifth Ozu work overall, and the first of the postwar period, to top the Kinema Junpo poll, making it the Japanese critics' "best film" of 1949. In addition, that year the film won four prizes at the distinguished Mainichi Film Awards, sponsored by the newspaper Mainichi Shinbun: Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actress.
In a 2009 poll by Kinema Junpo magazine of the best Japanese films of all time, nine Ozu films appeared. Late Spring was the second highest-rated film, tying for 36th place.
Ozu's younger contemporary, Akira Kurosawa, in 1999 published a conversation with his daughter Kazuko in which he provided his unranked personal listing, in chronological order, of the top 100 films, both Japanese and non-Japanese, of all time. One of the works he selected was Late Spring, with the following comment: " characteristic camera work was imitated by many directors abroads as well, i.e., many people saw and see Mr. Ozu’s movies, right? That’s good. Indeed, one can learn pretty much from his movies. Young prospective movie makers in Japan should, I hope, see more of Ozu’s work. Ah, it was really good times when Mr. Ozu, Mr. Naruse and/or Mr. Mizoguchi were all making movies!"
Reception and reputation of the film outside Japan
released the film in North America on July 21, 1972. A newspaper clipping, dated August 6, 1972, indicates that, of the New York-based critics of the time, six gave the work a favorable review and one critic gave it a "mixed" review.Canby observed that "the difficulty with Ozu is not in appreciating his films... in describing an Ozu work in a way that doesn't diminish it, that doesn't reduce it to an inventory of his austere techniques, and that accurately reflects the unsentimental humanism of his discipline." He called the characters played by Ryu and Hara "immensely affecting—gentle, loving, amused, thinking and feeling beings," and praised the filmmaker for his "profound respect for privacy, for the mystery of their emotions. Because of this—not in spite of this—his films, of which Late Spring is one of the finest, are so moving."
Stuart Byron of The Village Voice called Late Spring "Ozu’s greatest achievement and, thus, one of the ten best films of all time."
In Variety, reviewer Robert B. Frederick also had high praise for the work. "Although made in 1949," he wrote, "this infrequently-seen example of the cinematic mastery of the late Yasujirō Ozu... compares more than favorably with any major Japanese film... A heartwarming and very worthy cinematic effort."
Modern genre critics equally reviewed the film positively, giving the film an aggregate score of 100% on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes from 24 reviews. Kurosawa biographer Stuart Galbraith IV, reviewing the Criterion Collection DVD, called the work "archetypal postwar Ozu" and "a masterful distillation of themes its director would return to again and again... There are better Ozu films, but Late Spring impressively boils the director's concerns down to their most basic elements." Norman Holland concludes that "Ozu has created—in the best Japanese manner—a film explicitly beautiful but rich in ambiguity and the unexpressed." Dennis Schwartz calls it "a beautiful drama," in which "there's nothing artificial, manipulative or sentimental."
Leonard Maltin awarded the film four out of four stars, calling it "A transcendent and profoundly moving work rivaling Tokyo Story as the director's masterpiece."
On August 1, 2012, the British Film Institute published its decennial Sight & Sound "Greatest Films of All Time" poll, one of the most widely respected such polls among fans and scholars A total of 846 "critics, programmers, academics, distributors, writers and other cinephiles" submitted Top Ten lists for the poll. In that listing, Late Spring appeared in 15th place among all films from the dawn of cinema. It was the second-highest ranking Japanese-language film on the list. In the previous BFI poll, Late Spring did not appear either on the critics' or the directors' "Top Ten" lists.
Films inspired by ''Late Spring''
Only one remake of Late Spring has so far been filmed: a television movie, produced to celebrate Ozu's centennial, entitled A Daughter's Marriage, directed by the distinguished filmmaker Kon Ichikawa and produced by the Japanese pay television channel WOWOW. It was broadcast on December 14, 2003, two days after the 100th anniversary of Ozu's birth. Ichikawa, a younger contemporary of Ozu's, was 88 years old at the time of the broadcast. The film recreated various idiosyncrasies of the late director's style. For example, Ichikawa included many shots with vividly red objects, in imitation of Ozu's well-known fondness for red in his own color films.In addition, a number of works wholly or partly inspired by the original 1949 film have been released over the years. These works can be divided into three types: variations, homages, and at least one parody.
The most obvious variation of Late Spring in Ozu's own work is Late Autumn, which deals again with a daughter who reacts negatively to the rumor of the remarriage of a parent—this time a mother rather than a father—and ultimately gets married herself. One scholar refers to this film as "a version of Late Spring.", while another describes it as "a revision of Late Spring, with Akiko taking the father's role." Other Ozu films also contain plot elements first established by the 1949 film, though somewhat altered. For example, the 1958 film Equinox Flower, the director's first ever in color, focuses on a marriageable daughter, though as one scholar points out, the plot is a "reversal" of Late Spring in that the father at first opposes his daughter's marriage.
The French director Claire Denis has acknowledged that her critically acclaimed 2008 film 35 Shots of Rum is a homage to Ozu. "This film is also a sort of... not copy, but it has stolen a lot to a famous Ozu film called Late Spring… was trying to show through few characters… the relation between human beings."
Because of perceived similarities, in subject matter and in his contemplative approach, to the Japanese master, Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien has been called "an artistic heir to Ozu." In 2003, to celebrate Ozu's centennial, Shochiku, the studio where Ozu worked throughout his career, commissioned Hou to make a film in tribute. The resulting work, Café Lumière, has been called, "in its way, a version of the Late Spring story, updated to the early 21st Century." However, unlike the virginal Noriko, the heroine of the Hou film, Yoko, "lives on her own, is independent of her family, and has no intention of marrying just because she's pregnant."
An offbeat Japanese variant, the 2003 film A Lonely Cow Weeps at Dawn, belongs to the Japanese pinku genre of softcore films. The drama tells the story of a senile farmer who enjoys a bizarrely sexualized relationship with his daughter-in-law. The director, Daisuke Goto, claims that the film was strongly influenced by, among other works, Late Spring.
Perhaps the strangest tribute of all is yet another "pink" film, , also known as Spring Bride or My Brother's Wife, director Masayuki Suo's first film. It has been called "perhaps the only film that ever replicated Ozu’s style down to the most minute detail. The story, style, characters, and settings constantly invoke Ozu’s iconography, and especially Late Spring." As in Ozu's classic, the narrative has a wedding which is never shown on screen and Suo consistently imitates the older master's "much posited predilection for carefully composed static shots from a low camera angle... affectionately poking fun at the restrained and easy going 'life goes on' philosophy of its model." Nornes indicates that this film is significant because it points up the fact that Ozu's films are enjoyed in different ways by two different audiences: as emotion-laden family stories by general audiences, and as exercises in cinematic style by sophisticated film fans.
Home media
Late Spring was released on VHS in an English-subtitled version by New Yorker Video in November 1994.In 2003, Shochiku marked the centennial of Ozu's birth by releasing a Region 2 DVD of the film in Japan. In the same year, the Hong Kong-based distributor Panorama released a Region 0 DVD of the film, in NTSC format, but with English and Chinese subtitles.
In 2004, Bo Ying, a Chinese distributor, released a Region 0 DVD of Late Spring in NTSC format with English, Chinese and Japanese subtitles. In 2005, Tartan released a Region 0, English-subtitled DVD of the film, in PAL format, as Volume One of its Triple Digipak series of Ozu's Noriko Trilogy.
In 2006, The Criterion Collection released a two-disc set with a restored high-definition digital transfer and new subtitle translations. It also includes Tokyo-Ga, an Ozu tribute by director Wim Wenders; an audio commentary by Richard Peña; and essays by Michael Atkinson and Donald Richie. In 2009, the Australian distributor Madman Entertainment released an English-subtitled Region 4 DVD of the film in PAL format.
In June 2010, BFI released the film on Region B-locked Blu-ray. The release includes a 24-page illustrated booklet as well as Ozu's earlier film The Only Son, also in HD, and a DVD copy of both films. In April 2012, Criterion released a Blu-ray version of the film. This release contains the same supplements as Criterion's DVD version.