If you're wondering where the line between spring and summer is in the Ozu canon, Noriko (Setsuko Hara) is 27 in Late Spring and 28 in Early Summer. Only two years after Late Spring, Ozu returns to that film's premise, but if Ozu returns to this theme often, it's because it's a transition point, not unlike what Japan was going through at the time. It's time to move on and stop clutching old ideas. Instead of an intimate father-daughter dynamic, Noriko lives in a full house, with three generations, two of them held back by her unwillingness to marry. Her brother-in-law (Chishū Ryū who was her aged father in Late Spring - I find him nearly unrecognizable when playing nearer his real age) is especially keen to get her married so the parents can retire to the country and he can inherit the house, but... will they agree with her choice of husband? Meanwhile, on an almost separate track (and that's a pun), the younger kids seem to spring out of Ozu's silent comedies about little boys getting up to all sorts of shenanigans (and heralding the TV-obsessed kids of Good Morning), lending the film a more comic tone that makes the drama all that more effective. In the end, tradition will win and therefore the sadness of the inevitable does too. Ozu knows we must move on, yes, but also feels what is lost in the process.
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Comments 1 - 8 of 8
Paper_Okami
Simple, yet profound and moving.Dieguito
Great Ozu!thechosenone06
A masterpiece, mindblowing!jmars
sublimePaulorsadv
High level movie.Windill
A masterpiece, really.Tells the story of a 28-year old woman facing social pressure to get married.
deckard.
one of the rare movies that reached the zenith of cinema and captured life at its very essence.it has that magical flow, while seemingly static. pure perfection. you cannot remove any single line, shot, scene.
Siskoid
If you're wondering where the line between spring and summer is in the Ozu canon, Noriko (Setsuko Hara) is 27 in Late Spring and 28 in Early Summer. Only two years after Late Spring, Ozu returns to that film's premise, but if Ozu returns to this theme often, it's because it's a transition point, not unlike what Japan was going through at the time. It's time to move on and stop clutching old ideas. Instead of an intimate father-daughter dynamic, Noriko lives in a full house, with three generations, two of them held back by her unwillingness to marry. Her brother-in-law (Chishū Ryū who was her aged father in Late Spring - I find him nearly unrecognizable when playing nearer his real age) is especially keen to get her married so the parents can retire to the country and he can inherit the house, but... will they agree with her choice of husband? Meanwhile, on an almost separate track (and that's a pun), the younger kids seem to spring out of Ozu's silent comedies about little boys getting up to all sorts of shenanigans (and heralding the TV-obsessed kids of Good Morning), lending the film a more comic tone that makes the drama all that more effective. In the end, tradition will win and therefore the sadness of the inevitable does too. Ozu knows we must move on, yes, but also feels what is lost in the process.