Tarda primavera

The revelation of Noriko's wedding dress is perhaps the most powerfully painful moment of cinema I've ever experienced. The contrast between her freedom before her wedding, the moving camera (very foreign to Ozu) her range of emotion, her geographical and social freedom, and the deeply disturbing oppression that her wedding signals is very affecting. It is gutting. And so devastating that she accepts her oppression. Powerful, if needing commitment and patience. Especially the six minutes of the impenetrable Noh play.

The concept of mono no aware is said to define the essence of Japanese culture. The phrase means "a sensitivity to things", the ability to experience a direct connection with the world without the necessity of language. Yasujiro Ozu sums up this philosophy in Late Spring, a serene depiction of the acceptance of life's inevitabilities and the sadness that follows it. The film shows the pressure in Japanese families for children to be married as the "natural order" of things, regardless of their wishes. One wonders if Ozu, who never married, is sharing his own family experience with us.

In Late Spring, a widowed Professor, Somiya (Chishu Ryu), must face the inevitability of giving up his daughter, Noriko (Setsuko Hara) to marriage. Noriko, however, wants only to continue to live at home and care for her father and insists that marriage is not for her. Yet the social pressure to marry continues to build, coming not only from her father but also from Somiya's sister Masa (Haruko Sugimura) whom she calls "Auntie", and from a friend, the widower Onodera (Masao Mishima) who has recently remarried. Masa, unrelenting, presents Noriko with a prospect named Satake who reminds her of actor Gary Cooper, but she is still reluctant. To make it easier for Noriko to decide, Somiya tells her that he is planning to remarry and she will no longer need to take care of him. Noriko's agonizes over her decision and her once beaming face increasingly carries hints of resignation. At the end, the old man sits alone peeling a piece of fruit as the ocean waves signal the inexorable flow of timeless things.

This is the first film by Ozo that I have seen and it's a revelation. I have the feeling that I entered a new world which I am eager to explore further.

The film is made in 1949, four years after the defeat of Japan, but there are no ruins in sight, on the contrary, landscapes are proper and well maintained, homes are clean and nothing seems to be missing, people live their lives in a way that seems to go on for centuries. The American presence is just hinted by a Coca-Cola sign, or English inscriptions at train stations. Maybe a political statement by Ozu about the perennial continuity of the Japanese civilization despite the destruction Japan had just gone through.

The war is also hardly remembered and hidden back in the past. We learn that the principal hero Noriko (wonderfully acted by Ozu's preferred actress of the period Setsuko Hara) was interned in a labor camp during the war, but nothing in her demeanor and certainly not her radiant smile lets anybody feel about her suffering. She loves being at home and taking care of her father (Chishu Ryu, another favorite actor of Ozu) with a devotion that is troubled only by the insistence of the family to get her married, as social customs demand for a young woman of her age. Eventually she will be curved into accepting a marriage arrangement under pressure by her caring aunt and by her father, who would make anything to have her happy, but only according to the customs and their own conceptions.

It's wonderful to watch how this delicate family drama is being filmed, with a taste and aesthetic balance that makes of each scene a masterpiece worth being seen for its own. Ozu is also a master of using soundtrack, and his matching of visuals and sound sometimes equally effective in creating emotion reminds the use that Hitchcock makes of music in his films.

There is a lot of symbolism in this movie, and I certainly have lost some of the more subtle messages because of my lack of familiarity with Japanese customs and culture. And yet this film is at the same time simple, as well as modern and universal in look, we can resonate with the characters and I had less difficulty in understanding their emotions than in many other Japanese or Far East movies seen through the perspective of my 'western' eyes. At the same time the film has a wonderful human dimension, we can see on screen a story of love and affection between two people who need and are willing to make a huge sacrifice in order for the other one to be happy. This combination of emotions, simplicity and art cinema makes of this movie a real treat.

Robin Woods in his fascinating new book of criticism "Sexual Politics and Narrative Film" writes eloquently about this film as a defining example of Ozu's films progressive nature. I would agree and add wholeheartedly that even after reading Wood's non-traditional take on Ozu I was still blown away by the film's rich identification with the character of Noriko (played by the legendary Setsuko Hara). The story is simple: Noriko a single Japanese woman is living a seemingly happy life caring for her widowed aging father. Social pressures, however, force family and friends to believe that Noriko can only be fulfilled by entering into marriage, although Noriko seems to have no interest in marriage herself. With this simple narrative Ozu is able to create a relationship between his characters that is so rich and complete we feel we know them. As always this is done with the smallest of carefully studied behavior and the precision of mise-en-scene over fancy editing and dazzling camera movements. A wonderful, heartbreakingly real movie from one of Japan's greatest directors.

Yasujiro Ozu has been hailed as one of the great masters of cinema for years. I have to agree with those film scholars and critics because Late Spring is a prime example of good cinema. Everything in this film flows like a gentle river. I was fascinated and completely thrilled by every second of this great work of art. Setsuko Hara and Chishu Ryu are just wonderful. You just have to forget about classical Hollywood montage and editing, you will not find any of those rules here. The master create all new ones and I guarantee that if you try one, you will want to see more of his films. This was the third work by Ozu that I had the chance to watch and I can't hardly wait to see another one.

Sincerely, I urge anybody that love cinema to see this one, quite simply one of the greatest films I have seen. 10/10