NOVEMBER 14-20

SPRING TURNS TO AUTUMN...
The Post-War Films of Yasujiro Ozu
Probably the most unknown famous director, Yasujiro Ozu made extraordinary films about the most ordinary events and circumstances. Film scholar Donald Richie observed, “In every Ozu film, the whole world exists in one family. The ends of the earth are no more distant than outside the house.” Within these confines Ozu found humor, tragedy, pathos, and redemption in the small gestures and subtle rhythms of everyday life. His influence can be seen in the works of directors as diverse as Andy Warhol, Paul Schrader, Wayne Wang, Jim Jarmusch, and Wim Wenders, who called his work, “a sacred treasure of the cinema.” David Thomson calls Ozu, “a vital lesson to American film, and provocation to us to be wise, calm, and more demanding in what we want of our films.” This series brings to a our audience the shimmering brilliance of the master’s films, available at last in new 35mm prints from Cowboy Pictures. Notes adapted from the Hong Kong Festival program. The complete Ozu series will show at the Pacific Film Archive November 23-December 21. All films in Japanese with English subtitles.

FRIDAY–SATURDAY NOVEMBER 14–15
LATE SPRING (Banshun)
12:00, 4:45, 9:35 The master’s personal favorite, Late Spring is about ties of love, devotion and duty that bind and eventually sever the intimate relationship between a widower and his young daughter. Where else can the ordinary gesture of peeling an apple achieve such profound emotional impact? The incomparable Setsuko Hara makes her debut in an Ozu film, the first of many legendary father-daughter pairings with Chishu Ryu. Set against a genteel and civilized background of kimonos, tea ceremonies and Noh plays, it is a story of heartbreaking beauty. Script by Kogo Noda and Ozu. With Chishu Ryu, Setsuko Hara, Haruko Sugimura, and Kuniko Miyake. (1949) 108m.

TOKYO STORY (Tokyo Monogatari)
2:10, 7:00 Ozu’s best-known film is ranked by the BFI international critics poll as the fifth best film of all time. An elderly couple’s trip from their provincial town to visit their children in Tokyo becomes an elegy on the disintegration of the traditional Japanese family. The frosty reception by their own offspring contrasted with the gentle hospitality of their widowed daughter-in-law remains one of the most affecting pieces in all of cinema. Script by Kogo Noda and Ozu. With Chishu Ryu, Setsuko Hara, Haruko Sugimura, Kuniko Miyake, and Nobuo Nakamura (1953) 136m.

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 16
THE FLAVOR OF GREEN TEA OVER RICE (Ochazuke no Aji)
12noon, 4:45, 9:40 The title comes from a proverbial expression that celebrates simple tastes in life. Four married housewives sneak off for a drink together. What begins as a gentle comedy of manners gains gravity when the institution of marriage, and the nature of human compatibility are thrown in doubt. One couple’s reconciliation over a the simple title dish is a moving expression of marital harmony. With a rare (for Ozu) busily moving camera, the film suggests a sense of change and mobility. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. With Shin Saburi, Chishu Ryu, and Kuniko Miyake. (1952) 116m.

EARLY SUMMER (Bakushu)
2:10, 7:05 A single working girl’s family is trying desperately to find her a husband—her boss’s 40-year-old bachelor friend would do nicely. Her impulsive acceptance of another proposal surprises and disorients everyone (even herself). A buoyantly humorous tale told with Ozu’s singular simplicity and grace. Script by Kogo Noda and Ozu. With Chishu Ryu, Setsuko Hara, Haruko Sugimura, and Kuniko Miyake. (1951) 135m.

MONDAY NOVEMBER 17
RECORD OF A TENEMENT GENTLEMAN (Nagaya Shinskiroku)
7:30 “Everyone must do his duty. There’s no room for private feelings,” admonishes an ageing father, who after a lifetime of sacrifice desires to see his son follow in his footsteps as a teacher. The affection between them, though shadowed by wartime ideology and the father’s rigidity, does seep through in silently observed moments when even their motions are unconsciously in unison, and is all the more touching. Script by Tadao Ikeda and Yasujiro Ozu. With Choko Iida, Mitsuko Yoshikawa, Chishu Ryu, and Takeshi Sakamoto. (1947) 73m.

A HEN IN THE WIND (Kaze no Naka no Mendori)
9:00 A husband returns from the war. His wife confesses that to save their ailing son she had sold her body. Although stigmatized as a subject in postwar Japan, Ozu confronts prostitution with unswerving honesty, and his profound humanism shines through the most sordid details. While exploring the shame, guilt and anguish of the couple, Ozu resolves things on a note of unsentimental optimism, surpassing the clichés of melodramas like Waterloo Bridge. Script by Ryosuke Saito and Yasujiro Ozu. With Shuji Sano, Kinuyo Tanaka, Chishu Ryu, Takeshi Sakamoto, Hideo Mitsui. (1948) 84m.

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 18
EARLY SPRING (Soshun)
7:00 A bored salaryman finds a momentary diversion that threatens both his job and his marriage. With a minimum of melodrama and frenzy, Ozu conveys a sense of what he called, “the pathos of the white-collar life,” through painstakingly observed office topology, muted montages of commuter queues, and utilitarian buildings abstracted into Mondrian-like images of lines and squares. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. With Chishu Ryu, Haruko Sugimura, Kuniko Miyake, Hideo Mitsui, and Nobuo Nakamura. (1956) 144m.

TOKYO TWILIGHT (Tokyo Boshoku)
9:45 Ozu’s camera weaves in and out of dusky interiors, sooty bars and mahjong parlors in Tokyo’s seedier quarters, as a young girl slides into delinquency. It is her elder sister, struggling to hold together a broken family who anchors the story, and it is her mixed loyalties, and final, painful choice that gives the film its crushing emotional weight. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. With Setsuko Hara, Chishu Ryu, Haruko Sugimura, and Nobuo Nakamura. (1957) 141m.

WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 19
EQUINOX FLOWER (Higanbana)
1:00, 5:10, 9:25 Ozu’s first venture into color is an outburst of visual fireworks and pleasure. Magnificent reds dominate the cinematic palette, complemented by rainbow-colored exteriors and soft, soothing interiors creating a visual theme for the complex emotions behind Ozu’s breeziest domestic comedy. Ozu conspires, through clever twists and ellipses, to expose with affectionate irony, a father's self-contradictions, jealousy and injured pride regarding his daughter's self-arranged marriage. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. With Shin Saburi, Kinuyo Tanaka, Chishu Ryu, Keiji Sata, and Nobuo Nakamura. (1958) 120m.

GOOD MORNING (Ohayo)
3:20, 7:30 This mischievously earthy and genial comedy set in a close-quartered suburban neighbor-hood centers on two rambunctious boys who take a vow of silence to coerce their parents into buying a TV. Their rebellion against the small talk that acts as a social lubricant is punctuated with more fart jokes than the Farrelly brothers could dream of. A loose remake of Ozu’s own 1932 silent film, I Was Born, But… Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. With Keiji Sata, Chishu Ryu, Kuniko Miyake, and Haruko Sugimura. (1959) 94m.

THURSDAY NOVEMBER 20
LATE AUTUMN (Akibiyori)
7:00 Late Spring slowly yields to Late Autumn, as Ozu comes full circle with his motifs of family and life’s transience. Setsuko Hara, once the daughter who passed over marriage prospects to stand by her widowed father, now plays the widow with a daughter faced with the same dilemma, though in a more contemporary and affluent setting. Ozu explores evolving Japanese society with humor and grace in this low key war of the generations and the sexes. Script by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. With Setsuko Hara, Keiji Sata, Shin Saburi, Chishu Ryu, Kuniko Miyake, and Nobuo Nakamura. (1960) 127m.

AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON
9:30 An Autumn Afternoon is an elegiac work of ineffable sadness. Again, a father marries off his daughter. Completed after his own mother's death, Ozu’s exquisite last work depicts a man whose crushing loneliness is at its most intense when he's amongst a crowd. It delicately outlines how the values and life that Ozu held dear are giving way to impersonal consumerism and heedless economic progress. Script: by Kogo Noda and Yasujiro Ozu. With Chishu Ryu, Keiji Sata, Nobuo Nakamura, Kuniko Miyake, and Haruko Sugimura. (1962) 133m.