Slideshow
EARLY SPRING
Japan, 1956
Directed by Yasujirō Ozu
With Ryô Ikebe, Chikage Awashima, Teiji Takahashi, Keiko Kishi
Approx. 145 min. 35mm print courtesy of Japan Foundation/4K DCP Restoration.
In Japanese with English subtitles
Tokyo saraiman Ryô Ikebe, bored with job and wife, dailies with office colleague Keiko Kishi’s “Goldfish” — or does he? Nosy colleagues want to know. But there’s a transfer to the provinces in store, with a brilliant opening montage of everyone’s lousy Monday morning commute.
Reviews
“EARLY SPRING is, like Ozu’s other seasonally-titled works, a film about the passing of time, about the changes in society that sweep individuals along and about the struggle between maintaining tradition and embracing modernity.”
– Martyn Bamber, Senses of Cinema
“Ozu’s despairing view of postwar Japan looks as harshly at blind modernization as it does at decadent tradition.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker
“A casual yet meticulously detailed reconstruction of Japan’s routinized white-collar milieu.”
– Don Druker, Chicago Reader