An Autumn Afternoon [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Yasujiro Ozu Yasujiro Ozu

Overview

Director Yasujiro Ozu's final film, and a rare outing in color for him, continues his quietly observed explorations of family dynamics in postwar Japan. Frequent Ozu star Chishu Ryu plays Shuhei Hirayama, an aging widower whose three children each depend upon him in varying degrees. The eldest, Kazuo, who is married, is a spendthrift who purchases a new set of golf clubs, then hits up his indulgent dad for a loan to buy a refrigerator. The middle child, daughter Michiko, is a 24-year-old still living at home and happy to be the domestic fulcrum between her father and her younger brother, Koichi, a willful teenager. Shuhei's conviction that Michiko isn't ready for marriage scares away a potential suitor in whom she is also interested. But the old man has a change of heart after a long drinking session with several buddies, who warn him that Michiko might wind up an old maid, trapped in the web of loneliness he knows all too well. He arranges a marriage for her, and she finds herself caught between her own desires and her duty to her father. The story ends on the late afternoon of Michiko's wedding day, as Shuhei returns to his home to face life on his own, resigned to the fact that his daughter's happiness comes before his own.

Product Details

Release Date:	02/17/2015
UPC:	0715515137317
Original Release:	1962
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	A
Language:	English
Time:	1:53:00
Sales rank:	542

Special Features

New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack; Audio commentary featuring film scholar David Bordwell, author of Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema; Excerpts from "Yasujiro Ozu and The Taste of Sake," a 1978 episode of the French television program Ciné regards, featuring critics Michael Ciment and Georges Perec, that looks back on Ozu's career; Trailers; New English subtitle translation; PLUS: essays by critic Geoff Andrew and scholar Donald Richie

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Chishu Ryu	Shuhei Hirayama
Shima Iwashita	Michiko Hirayama
Keiji Sada	Koichi
Mariko Okada	Akiko
Nobuo Nakamura	Shuzo
Chishû Ryû	Shuhei Hirayama
Shin'ichirô Mikami	Kazuo Hirayama
Daisuke Kato	Yoshitaro Sakamoto
Kuniko Miyake	Nobuko
Ryûji Kita	Shin Horie
Michel Ciment	Actor
Georges Perec	Actor
Takanobu Saitô	Composer
Teruo Yoshida	Yutaka Miura
Noriko Maki	Fusako Taguchi
Eijirô Tôno	Sakuma, The 'Gourd'
Kyôko Kishida	'Kaoru' no Madame
Michiyo Tamaki	Tamako, gosai
Toyo Takahashi	'Wakamatsu' no Okami
Shinobu Asaji	Youko Sasaki, hisho
Masao Oda	Dousousei Watanabe
Fujio Suga	Suikyaku A
Zenichi Inagawa	Actor
Matsuko Shiga	Actor
Hisayo Komachi	Actor
Tami Yamamoto	Actor
Kentarô Imai	Actor
Daisuke Katô	Yoshitaro Sakamoto
Haruko Sugimura	Tomoko
Tsûsai Sugawara	Dousousei Sugai
Yasuo Ogata	Dousousei Ogata

Technical Credits

Kôgo Noda

Yasujiro Ozu	Director
Shizuo Yamanouchi	Producer
Kôgo Noda	Screenwriter
Akira Watanabe	Special Effects
Yoshiomi Hori	Sound Effects
Ichiro Ishii	Sound Effects
Yoshisaburô Senoo	Sound Effects

Editorial Reviews

No great director confined both his subject matter and technique like Yasujiro Ozu, and this, his final film, sums up so much of what makes that tunnel vision so eloquent. As in his masterpiece, Tokyo Story, and so many other films, Ozu observes, with an amazing blend of discretion and intimacy, the tangled relationships of Japanese families. His camera barely moves, remaining for the most part at the same level, not far above the floor. His editing is leisurely, and he frequently allows scenes to play out in real time. For all of the intense emotions in his stories, there are no confrontations; however, the flickerings of disappointment and resentment across the faces of his characters speak loudly enough. Ozu veteran Chishu Ryu is once again the kindly patriarch, indulging his married son, oblivious to his teenaged boy, and caught up in a relationship of mutual dependence with his daughter. He wants to do right by her, stifling any notion of her independence, only to reverse himself when he understands how selfish his actions are. The daughter is forced to take cues from her father, resigning herself (after a failed romance) to a happy domestic life with her father and younger brother, only to learn that she is to be married after all. Rather than frame this reversal as an act of hypocrisy, Ozu prefers to see it in gently ironic terms. A widower is forced to push away the one person in his life who loves him without demands or reservation. Even if Ozu didn't foresee this as his final film, it ends on a wonderfully elegiac note.

All Movie Guide - Tom Wiener