Kohayagawa-ke no aki

It is a bunch of baloney to say that END OF SUMMER is far behind Ozu's other efforts. I have seen most if not all of Ozu's most acclaimed works, and END OF SUMMER is the best one I've ever seen. It even surpasses TOKYO STORY, which many scholars claim is Ozu's best masterpiece, one of the greatest movies of all time. For my money, END OF SUMMER is one of the top five foreign movies of all time. The beautiful photography is sublime; the movie contains some of the funniest things in any Ozu movie; and the ending is one of the most heartbreaking, most superbly visualized endings ever put on celluloid! I just can't say enough good things about this movie. There may be another Ozu movie I haven't seen that surpasses this one, but I sincerely doubt there's more than one, if there's even one.

Western viewers want to find a stoical impulse in Ozu's world view, but I think a certain orientalism is at play in this. Surely this "genius from the east" must be telling us something... transcendental and wise! In fact, I think the two most constant themes in Ozu's films are the momentary joys of life, and the suffering that comes with the loss of loved ones, either to death, the demands of modernity, or some conspiracy between the two. Those two topics seem stripped particularly bare in this late work, a short one by the standards of the director. Ozu's longer films, particularly Tokyo Story, might literally be chamber dramas, but in their breadth of subject and number of characters they have an epic quality- a kaleidoscopic depiction of post-war Japanese society. This film, by comparison, truly is a chamber drama with a relatively tight focus on one central figure and those around him. The characters aren't meant to comment about anything but themselves, and their joys and sorrows are laid all the more bare.

... from writer-director Yasujiro Ozu. An elderly sake company owner (Ganjiro Nakamura) worries his extended family when his health falters and his financial choices come into question.

Ozu returns to familiar territory, including marrying off unwed relatives, familial obligations balanced against personal fulfillment, and the simple pleasures of domestic life. It all looks nice, each shot meticulously composed, and with added attention to ambient sound effects, like the sound of crickets chirping in the afternoon. Ozu only directed one film after this, 1962's An Autumn Afternoon, before dying in 1963 at age 60. His frequent star, and a major Japanese film fixture of the post-war years, Setsuko Hara, would also only appear in one more film, 1962's Chushingura. She lived in retirement another 53 years, passing away in 2015 at the age of 95.

After his second experience with colour, a light, happy "Ohayo", secretly epic and impressed, Ozu shot one of the milestones of his career: "Kohayagawa-ke no aki" is in my recollection, with "Banshun" and "Munakata shimai", his best work. Most of the themes exposed in previous films (father's intervention in his daughters' lifes, love (in the hands of others), solitude) are here integrated in a comedy-structured film that becomes a drama. It's perhaps his unique melodrama and it is shown with the desperate of the last breath for some characters, as usual in Ozu, doubtful and seeking a place for their quiet happiness.

There is no Ozu film nearest Sirk's or Minneli's universe like this one.

The penultimate film in his astonishing oeuvre, Yasujiro Ozu's story about an aging widower and his relationship with his three very different daughters has a strong sense of death throughout, contradicted with some of the most gorgeous cinematography available in cinema. Ozu's typical minimalist and economical visual style are quite conducive to realizing this theme, showing how even the most beautiful and poetic elements of life eventually run their course, as does everything in this life.

The main crux of the story rests on the patriarch of the family, Manbei, who continues to see a woman he knew while he was married, a notion which naturally upsets at least one of his daughters. The other two seem more pensive about the situation, leading them to contemplate their own lives as the eldest is widowed herself and debating whether or not to remarry while the youngest is wondering who she should marry. It is worth noting how Ozu portrays the elder generation as being more open to passion and vigorous living than the younger. The conclusion seems to be that despite the inevitability of death, how one lives one's life determines how they will be remembered rather than who they were perceived to be. Though death remains ever-important, it cannot and should not prevent one from attempting to live to the fullest possible existence.