Arguably the richest of the films I’ve seen as of this writing is Late Spring. Ozu made this film in 1949, and the war and American occupation hang heavily over it. Setsuko Hara, who played the character of Noriko, the widowed daughter-in-law in Tokyo Story, plays another, different character called Noriko. Her father in this film is played by Chishu Ryu, who played her father-in-law in Tokyo Story. Somiya (Ryu) is a widowed professor whose daughter, Noriko, is somewhat past “normal” marrying age. She is also sick from something, though apparently recovering. After an early visit to a hospital, she reports that her blood count is “down to 15,” whatever that means. Her father speculates that she became ill from forced labor during the war, and from scrounging for food scraps. But this concern is supplanted by the concern everyone feels in the story to get her married. Noriko is curiously traditional--curious, because others in the film, both young and old, seem to have adopted a “modern” view of marriage and divorce. One of her father’s friends has remarried; Noriko tells him that she feels he is now unclean because of this, which sentiment he finds greatly amusing. The central plot of the film is then revealed to center on Noriko’s aunt’s machinations to get her married, and possibly her father too. This latter idea horrifies Noriko. She is determined not to get married, but the prospect of her father marrying is enough to make her feel that she must leave. Her father, in an impressive bit of acting by Ryu, lies to her and tells her that he himself is getting married, and so she isn’t needed to take care of him anymore. A contemporary audience is bound to see this as unpleasant--Noriko really does not want to enter into an arranged marriage--but the characters in the film, most especially Noriko’s very Americanized friend Ayako, see this as a desirable outcome.
A description of the plot, though, is inadequate to conveying the beauty and complexity of the film, which is down to the way it is shot. It has all of the trademarks of the Ozu style. The camera is placed low, about three feet off the ground. This would be considered a low-angle shot is most cinema, which traditionally makes the figures in that shot seem towering, or perhaps menacing. So consistent, however, is the camera placement that quite a different effect is achieved. In some ways, it feels more “natural” to watch a film in this way since it corresponds more closely to the actual position of the spectator in a movie theatre. There is a lack of camera movement in general. Pans are more common in early Ozu, and are virtually absent in the later work, but never is there the sense of a busy camera. The one way in which the camera makes itself felt is through cuts to scenes where there are no people. There are two principle ways in which this happens. The first is a cut to an empty room into which people walk, and sometimes leave, all with the camera not moving. The second is a cut to a landscape. This can be either a landscape filled with beautiful plants and other natural scenes, or to something industrial; smokestacks, for instance. A particular scene (in the case of Late Spring, for instance, a tea ceremony) can be broken up with shots of the outdoors, as a form of punctuation, or perhaps as the introduction of other thematic material, like in a musical composition. It may also be another way of achieving the effect I describe with the ending of A Hen in the Wind, that of distancing the speactator from the narrative. The most memorable stylistic feature of Ozu’s camera to me is the way he films conversations. Instead of a standard shot/reverse shot technique, Ozu’s characters directly address the camera. The more usual practice is to include a part of the listener’s head in the shot to show who is being addressed; and the speaker seldom looks directly in the camera. Ozu’s camera is placed approximately where the listener is seated in the film, which, when combined with the direct address to the camera, gives a particularly intimate feel. This is a technique also employed to some degree by Jacques Demy.
Her father speculates that she became ill from forced labor during the war, and from scrounging for food scraps. But this concern is supplanted by the concern everyone feels in the story to get her married. Noriko is curiously traditional--curious, because others in the film, both young and old, seem to have adopted a “modern” view of marriage and divorce. One of her father’s friends has remarried; Noriko tells him that she feels he is now unclean because of this, which sentiment he finds greatly amusing. The central plot of the film is then revealed to center on Noriko’s aunt’s machinations to get her married, and possibly her father too. This latter idea horrifies Noriko. She is determined not to get married, but the prospect of her father marrying is enough to make her feel that she must leave. Her father, in an impressive bit of acting by Ryu, lies to her and tells her that he himself is getting married, and so she isn’t needed to take care of him anymore. A contemporary audience is bound to see this as unpleasant--Noriko really does not want to enter into an arranged marriage--but the characters in the film, most especially Noriko’s very Americanized friend Ayako, see this as a desirable outcome.
There is a lack of camera movement in general. Pans are more common in early Ozu, and are virtually absent in the later work, but never is there the sense of a busy camera. The one way in which the camera makes itself felt is through cuts to scenes where there are no people. There are two principle ways in which this happens. The first is a cut to an empty room into which people walk, and sometimes leave, all with the camera not moving. The second is a cut to a landscape. This can be either a landscape filled with beautiful plants and other natural scenes, or to something industrial; smokestacks, for instance. A particular scene (in the case of Late Spring, for instance, a tea ceremony) can be broken up with shots of the outdoors, as a form of punctuation, or perhaps as the introduction of other thematic material, like in a musical composition. It may also be another way of achieving the effect I describe with the ending of A Hen in the Wind, that of distancing the speactator from the narrative. The most memorable stylistic feature of Ozu’s camera to me is the way he films conversations. Instead of a standard shot/reverse shot technique, Ozu’s characters directly address the camera. The more usual practice is to include a part of the listener’s head in the shot to show who is being addressed; and the speaker seldom looks directly in the camera. Ozu’s camera is placed approximately where the listener is seated in the film, which, when combined with the direct address to the camera, gives a particularly intimate feel. This is a technique also employed to some degree by Jacques Demy.