Criterion sub-label Eclipse makes good on their third collection, Late Ozu, less a five-film boxset of the master's sunset years, than an opportunity (or is it an excuse?) to see his films in succession, letting them ferment in lovely red teapots.
Watching a series of Yasujiro Ozu's films is like making rice: the process and elements never change. But depending on how much water you put, or the kind of rice you use, or how long you let it boil, it's a different texture, softness, and whiteness, even if it "tastes the same." And hell if it doesn't taste good each time. Or at least fulfilling. Watching the Eclipse Series 3: Late Ozu over the course of 4-5 days has left me, if the rice analogy still holds your attention, full. Satisfyingly full, in fact. Those who maintain that late Ozu provides nothing more than a revisiting of themes, situations, characters, and places of the thirties and forties, hold out your bowls. The five films that make up Late Ozu provide enough small surprises to please fans ranging from the die-hard to those who want to get to know Ozu and his cinematic world.
For a filmmaker like Ozu where "small" actually means "big" at the level of style, form, and narrative, Late Ozu showcases how deft Ozu was in pushing the boundaries between comedy and melodrama. You sense how effortless it became for him to make more flexible the terms "comedy" and "tragedy" with each film seen in chronological order. Take, for example, the first film in the boxset, Early Spring (Banshun, 1956), Ozu's first film after the success of Tokyo Story (Tokyo monogatari, 1955). As touching as that breakthrough film was/is, I would say that Early Spring continues to up the ante in microscoping in on what makes human relations work -- and as in all his films, also how they don't work. In its tragic/melodramatic tone, I almost thought I was watching a Naruse Mikio film. In fact, Early Spring is a very close cousin to Naruse's Repast (Meshi, 1951) in that it takes on the life of a married couple and the tribulations that it encounters as marriage transforms into routine. The context of the salary man/woman routine is fascinating, and blends seamlessly well with Ozu's technical rigor. While Repast only hints at an affair, though, Early Spring has one. But remember, this is Ozu, which means that in terms of form, it's what one would call "de-dramatised" due to the stylised acting, elliptical editing, and narrative.
Screen Capture: Ikebe Ryo as a married salaryman in Early Spring
Screen Capture: Ikebe with Awashima Chikage as his wife
At the same time, as with the other four films in the series, this doesn't mean that there's an absence of affect. Quite the opposite. Oddly enough, the two black-and-white films in the bunch -- Early Spring and Tokyo Twilight (Tokyo Boshoku, 1957) -- are the most heart-wrenching and moving, with Ozu swinging very much towards tragedy/melodrama, and towards Naruse's dark, relentless tenor. Which means some stellar performances from the Ozu troupe of actors, such as Arima Ineko as the troubled, lonely, and pregnant daughter of a broken home, Hara Setsuko as her elder sister (who knew she could scowl as profoundly as she smiles?), and Yamada Isuzu as the mother who left them and their father in Tokyo Twilight, as well as Awashima Chikage and Ikebe Ryo as the distressed but incredibly good-looking couple in Early Spring. These two films prove that such calm-sounding titles belie insular worlds of marital discord across several generations and listlessness in the former, and adultery and the numbing routine of a salary man's life and reconciliation in the latter.
Screen Capture: Hara Setsuko (sitting) & Arima Ineko as sisters in Tokyo Twilight
Screen Capture: Yamada Isuzu as the mother in Tokyo Twilight
One further note before moving on to the colour films: Early Spring, like Tokyo Story before it, contains one of the rare examples of tracking shots that would be altogether abandoned once Ozu switched to color.
The turn to color from Equinox Flower (Higanbana, 1958) on proves, it seems, Ozu's settling into the "reclining god" status. The remaining three films -- Equinox Flower, Late Autumn (Akibiyori, 1960), and The End of Summer (Kohayagawa-ke no aki, 1961) -- in Late Ozu, if viewed haphazardly one after another, can easily blend into each other and form but one über-film. Of course, Ozu-philes know that Late Autumn is a remake of Late Spring (Banshun, 1949), only this time, it is a mother and daughter relationship, instead of a father and daughter, put to the test when the daughter refuses to be married off in favor of postponing marriage to remain with her widow parent. Late Autumn not only illustrates the aesthetic difference color can have in the hands of a technical perfectionist like Ozu so that calling it a "remake" of Early Summer degrades it, but is also a continuation of the balance of comedy/tragedy-melodrama and character development begun with Equinox Flower. As vibrant and proto-feminist as Equinox Flower may be (where a man's daughter and his friends' daughters ultimately gang up on him to interrogate the issue of a woman choosing her marriage partner out of love and not arrangement), personally I find Late Autumn just as refreshing, contrary to those who find Ozu's color period to be completely stiff and "academicist" -- at the very least, you'll never look at a tea kettle and radio in the same way. Once again, the Shochiku roster of stars doubling as Ozu's stock company shines: Saburi Shin as the father, Hara Setsuko as the perennial widow every man wants to marry, Tsugasa Yoko as the dutiful but independent daughter, and her inevitable love interest, Sada Kenji.
Screen Capture: Late Autumn
Screen Capture: Tsukasa Yoko (left) as the daughter to Hara Setsuko's mother (right) in Late Autumn
Screen Capture: Tanaka Kinuyo in Equinox Flower
Ozu absolutely redefined "ensemble performance" as Preston Sturges did in the forties. But "ensemble" in Ozu's case comes to include restaurants, bars, apartment complexes, and office buildings. Bar and restaurant names such as "Genbura" and "Luna" reappear again and again throughout Equinox Flower and Late Autumn. If that's not enough to make it hard to distinguish one film from another, Ozu even recycles (okay, maybe not the most appropriate word) character names: Hara plays a widow named Akiko in both, the family name Sugiyama and Hirayama spans not only these two but hearkens to Early Spring. By the time you get to the last film of the series, The End of Summer (Kohayagawa-ke no aki, 1961), you almost feel like you're watching a sophisticated home movie of relatives you've come to know and others whom you've just realised you have. In this film, famed kabuki actor Nakamura Ganjiro is the happy-go-lucky father visiting his former love and worrying his children. Interestingly, Osaka and Kyoto rather than Tokyo are the settings. But regardless, the cyclical nature of the young replacing the old and revising, however little, the habits of the previous generations, only to inevitably be replaced again remains the most poignant theme across the black-and-white and color films (as opposed to Donald Richie's preferred term of "dissolution" of the family).
Another aspect of Ozu's color films is the increasing comfort and luxury of the families. No longer do you get even glimpses of bohemian-like artists and blue-collar workers. More and more we enter the white-collar world where there always seems to be time for golf and other outings. Even if characters mention saving up money for extended trips together (Late Autumn), there's an effortlessness matched by the formal rigor. At the same time, though, all the films express the matter-of-fact issue of class (but not necessarily class consciousness) that links to the cyclical and endless talks on re/marriage: from the salary man office affair borne out of routine in Early Spring, to talk of a small Osaka company merging with a huge corporation because it can't be helped in The End of Summer.
Screen Capture: Aratama Michiyo in The End of Summer
Screen Capture: Nakamura Ganjiro in The End of Summer
After all this, perhaps it's fitting that Late Ozu does not contain extras. No, there are no audio commentaries, as with all of the Eclipse series so far. It's a stripping down to the basic element of watching a film, which in the case of Ozu has its own meaning. But I beg to differ with Glenn Kenny when he says that these films may not be the best starting point to get into the Ozu world. He opts for Tokyo Story almost by virtue of its being the most well-known and "complete" in Ozu aesthetics/theme. That may be so, although to understand what "complete" means, you have to know the context provided by the other films. And so, the most apt term for Late Ozu would be its context-ness (which may be as helpful or as loopy as the rice analogy, depending on the time of day). In terms of the transfer quality, there's really nothing to complain about; the closest would be some slight wear in moments of Tokyo Twilight, as well as the audio, or that the flesh tones in The End of Summer can get a bit too pink for my taste. But only if you watch the film in the most sensitive of conditions and are looking for faults. Frankly, it's pure nitpicking on my part. So sit back and enjoy the rice.
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