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Eclipse Series #3 - Late Ozu (Early Spring / Tokyo Twilight / Equinox Flower / Late Autumn / The End of Summer) (Criterion Collection) Posters
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Eclipse Series #3 - Late Ozu (Early Spring / Tokyo Twilight / Equinox Flower / Late Autumn / The End of Summer) (Criterion Collection) DVD
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Rating:  -
Here we have five very fine movies from the master of Japanese domestic dramas, Yasujiro Ozu. Of the five, I give Late Autumn, Tokyo Twilight & The End of Summer five stars. Early Spring and Equinox Flower are very strong four star movies. All five are, in one way or another, the type of quiet, dialogue heavy almost stagey examinations of the tremendous changes in postwar Japanese society at home, in leisure & in the workplace.
Ozu made one type of movie brilliantly. Through expert camera-work, nuanced acting and a brilliant understanding of human nature, Ozu returned again and again to discussing the inevitable sadnesses and quiet joys of everyday life in a quickly changing society. Much of his focus is on the prewar/postwar generation gap. Ozu was the rare social commentator who understood that life is messy, personalities are inexplicable, love endures & even deeply flawed people need and deserve love and respect.
Because he lacked range, (through choice, rather than ability, it would seem) I would hesitate to refer to Ozu as a "great" director. I would say he was an excellent director who did not achieve greatness. His movies lack the ingenious melodrama of Kurosawa, the searing soul-searching of Bergman, the sheer creativity of Fellini, the subtle brilliance of the relaxed playacting of Ford or the cleverness of Hitchcock. Ozu is an extremely worthy second best Japanese director to Kurosawa.
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"Eclipse Series #3 Late Ozu" is an absolute delight. It used to be hard to get Ozu until Criterion did us this favor. Sure, I miss the "extras" and commentaries, and little pamphlets and geegaws that embellish other Criterion Collection releases: such as the latest "Seven Samurai" and "Ugetsu"...with all the bells and whistles.
But, darn it, it is the film itself that is the substance, and in this series Ozu comes to us with the fullness of his vision. Commentary? We don't need no stinking commentary. The films speak to us, gently breaking our hearts. A must for those who love film.
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Another fine Criterion Collection edition of the latter work of THE consummate Japanese filmmaker. For the true cineaste and connoisseur of Japanese culture. An excellent selection and a good value.
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THE SET: I've seen the complaints about less-than-pristine picture quality and the three-sided piece of paper that constitutes the "box." Look, we're being handed five rarely-seen films by Yasujiro Ozu! Complaining about the packaging or minor picture imperfections is like receiving a fortune in rare pearls and griping that they come in a paper bag and still smell faintly of sea water. Get over it.
EARLY SPRING (5 stars): This is my favorite of the lot, demonstrating what Ozu does best: it presents a clearly-stated theme, and then slowly lets "secondary" characters take over the narrative from an unexpected direction. Seemingly, this is about the gray, monotonous life of the "salaryman" in post-war Japan. It does illustrate that life, but to see this as a sort of Asian MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT is to miss the point. Ozu's films pivot on what is off-camera, or on what is NOT being acted on the faces of those on-camera. Before launching his corporate slice-of-life, Ozu reveals whom to watch from the first face we see--that of Masako (Chikage Awashima), lying on her futon, sleepless as the day dawns. Over the course of the film, we learn what her anxiety is about. We hear competing views on how to survive a failing marriage. Most viewers will long for her to dump her selfish husband, Shoji. We will see her confront him firmly, but with astonishing decorum. This, keep in mind, is in the context of a film where Shoji has roughly double the screen time of Masako. That's what you get with Ozu. The real story is often just out of frame.
TOKYO TWILIGHT (3.5 stars): Kudos to the veteran writer/director for trying to break out of his accustomed style of domestic drama. I forget who said, "The greater the success, the closer it verges on failure," but this is somehow the inverse of that. It is a failure that verges tantalizingly close to brilliance. TOKYO TWILIGHT is a movie with BIG PLOT POINTS, on a scale I do not recall seeing in any other Ozu film. The center of all the turmoil is Akiko (Ineko Arima), who is bereaved more than once, strives to pay gambling debts, is jilted, has an abortion, learns her "dead" mother is still alive, and is hit by a train. Arima's flat-footed portrayal of Akiko is what makes this worth watching, and it has close-ups of her that stayed in my mind's eye for weeks. Still, the film is testimony to the fact that in Ozu's world, the cataclysms that result from small human missteps are more interesting to watch than conventional, "big" dramatic contrivances. However skillfully done, it is the latter we find here.
EQUINOX FLOWER (5 stars): Of the five films on offer in this set, EQUINOX FLOWER and THE END OF SUMMER are the two whose pivotal characters are men. Tellingly, these two films also happen to be comedies. Wataru Hirayama (Shin Saburi) is a garrulous, masculine version of the quietly conflicted female characters played by Setsuko Hara in other Ozu films. Hirayama talks a good talk when it comes to encouraging young people to marry for love, but when it comes to his own daughter (Ineko Arima, again), he wants complete control--and sees no contradiction between his words and deeds. It is the perfect set-up for a comedy based on the interaction of those with vastly different assumptions. Ozu's comedies draw from our recognition of universal foibles, and this is one of his best. He makes us see exaggerated versions of ourselves and when we laugh, we are also quietly gaining self-awareness.
LATE AUTUMN (4.5 stars): Superficially, this is a remake of LATE SPRING, with a marriageable daughter reluctant to abandon her widowed mother, Akika (Setsuko Hara)--in the earlier film, the elder parent was a father. Still, the two works have different literary sources, and the shuffling and reshuffling of seemingly minor details is what propels the best of Ozu's work. Yoko Tsukasa, as Aya, the daughter, conveys her filial devotion and her sadness quite skillfully. However, she is not in an enviable position having to play opposite Hara, whose brilliance lies in playing both the surface and the subtext in such a way as to make us think we alone know her true mind. Ozu doesn't completely succeed in turning this "mismatch" to the film's advantage, since the actions of Aya are its lynchpin. What he does instead is pursue a strategy like that of EARLY SPRING. What seems to be a straightforward story about finding a match for a young woman becomes something much more profound--a treatise on how shared bereavement is sometimes more precious than young love.
THE END OF SUMMER (5): Only Ozu could create a delightful family comedy that ends with a shot of crows perching on gravestones. Where is Banpei Kohayagawa, the family patriarch, going when he excuses himself mid-sentence and struts happily out into the street? His family soon learns, to their great consternation, that he has resumed the same affair that had once disrupted their family when their late mother was alive. Michiyo Aratama, as Fumiko (the eldest daughter), turns in one of the great comic performances in all of Ozu. Here's a sample of dialogue. Hisao: "At this point, Father's personality isn't going to change." Fumiko: "I'll yell at him until it does!" This was Ozu's penultimate film, but in its light-hearted depiction of the natural continuum between life and death, it feels like it would have been perfect as his last word.
The late films of Ozu show the director leaning more in the direction of the needs of younger characters, and being more pliable in giving us scenes that are conventionally gratifying. He never panders in this respect, but instead holds out these moments as a loving gift. In the five films of this set, we see several successful examples of women's resistance to male-dominated values; we see a much more expansive definition of "family"; and, we get a great deal more story exposition than we may be used to. Finally, we are privileged to see two things I don't recall in any other Ozu movie: a man getting down on his knees and happily helping with the housework, and a woman, destined to marry, actually dressed in full bridal array at movie's end.
Enjoy these now. If you wait for a perfect restoration of these movies, you may never see them, and that would be tragic.
Rating: -
Laughter and sorrow mingle in this Ozu film about a large family of five siblings and their aging father, a widower who resumes a relationship with a mistress from 20 years ago. Meanwhile, two of his unmarried daughters consider the future as both have suitors of their own, and the family business, a brewery, struggles to keep itself afloat and there's talk of a merger. Many things, as it happens, are coming to an end, not just the summer, of which we are reminded in scene after scene as characters fan themselves and each other. One senses also that the film records the end of traditional Japanese culture as it absorbs everything American - from western-style dress and English phrases, to Coca Cola, a sing-along to the tune of "My Darling Clementine," and a young woman who seems to have walked straight out of a Gidget movie and wants a mink stole. The sun-washed colors are reminiscent of 1950s Hollywood.
Ozu's recognizable theatrical style is evident everywhere, as characters arrange themselves in carefully posed compositions or move in and out of the frame (often glimpsed through doorways) while the camera remains stationary and low to the floor. Sequences of scenes are separated by exterior shots of trees or narrow streets - like still photographs. A row of barrels lies tilted against a wall, each at exactly the same angle, two open umbrellas filling a space between them. In one memorable scene, a grandfather and his young grandson play a game of hide-and-seek, calling back and forth to each other, while the grandfather secretly changes clothes to make an escape from the house. It's Ozu at his best, a gently told story about life's intermingling of endings and new beginnings.
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