Slideshow
AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON
Japan, 1962
Directed by Yasujirō Ozu
With Chishû Ryû, Shima Iwashita, Keiji Sada
Approx. 113 min. 35mm/DCP.
In Japanese with English subtitles
Once again father Chishû Ryû (looking younger than the 13-years-earlier LATE SPRING) must trick his daughter Shima Iwashita to marry to force her from the nest, but here the emphasis is on the father and his encounter with an old teacher, a wartime subordinate (SEVEN SAMURAI’s Daisuke Katō) parading to the warship march and a bar proprietor (Kyoko Kishida, the WOMAN IN THE DUNES) who’s a dead ringer for his late wife, or is she? Ozu’s last film, although he didn’t know it — and the perfect curtain.
Reviews
“Yasujirō Ozu’s last film, made in 1962, is a study of an old man’s loneliness as he prepares to marry off his only daughter. Stylistically it’s one of Ozu’s purest, most elemental works: no camera movement, very little movement within the frames, and hardly any apparent narrative progression. Appreciating Ozu is a matter of temperament—for some, his films are unbearably dull; for others, they are works of a unique serenity and beauty.”
– Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
“In its exquisite refinement of Ozu’s style and themes, and its general air of nostalgia and loss, AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON does in fact feel like a summation of his career—and it is, after all, his final masterpiece”
– Geoff Andrew, The Criterion Collection
“With the bright colors of new urban landscapes (built up in the wake of wartime destruction) and the brazen clash of calmly assertive compositions, Ozu captures the ordinary desolation at the natural heart of things—and contemplates his own place on the edge of the precipice.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON is concerned with both the big picture changes affecting Ozu’s society and the individuals living within that society.”
– Jason Bellamy, Slant Magazine
“A profoundly simple, profoundly moving film.”
– The New York Times
“A film in a superbly composed minor key.”
– Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“A movingly valedictory affair”
– Time Out