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Setsuko Hara

Late Autumn (Yasujiro Ozu, 1960)

Yoko Tsukasa, Setsuko Hara, Ryuji Kita, Shin Saburi, and Nobuo Nakamura in Late Autumn

Cast: Setsuko Hara, Yoko Tsukasa, Mariko Okada, Shin Saburi, Nobuo Nakamura, Ryuji Kita, Keiji Sada, Chishu Ryu. Screenplay: Kogo Noda, Yasujiro Ozu, based on a novel by Ton Satomi. Cinematography: Yuharu Atsuta. Production design: Tomiji Shimizu. Film editing: Yoshiyasu Hamamura. Music: Takanobu Saito.

It’s possible to think of 1960 as a kind of watershed year in Japanese film, with the appearance of two such radically different films as Nagisa Oshima’s The Sun’s Burial and Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Autumn. The contrast between the lurid chaos of Oshima’s underworld and the strict geometry (of both style and morals) of Ozu’s middle classes couldn’t be sharper. I imagine some alien intelligence on a distant planet intercepting transmissions of both films and wondering that they could possibly come from the same world, let alone the same country (and even the same film studio, Shochiku). Ozu was of course an established master, whereas Oshima was beginning a career – with a bang, it should be said, making three feature films that year. The razzle-dazzle of The Sun’s Burial was long behind Ozu, if it was ever really in his cinematic vocabulary. But both films speak to the restless undercurrents in Japanese postwar society, Oshima’s by confronting the disorder and corruption, Ozu’s by slyly examining the breakup of stifling traditions in the Japanese family. Both end with solitary women, the gangster-prostitute Hanako in The Sun’s Burial and the empty-nest mother Akiko (Setsuko Hara) in Late Autumn, confronting loneliness. But if Hanako has a counterpart in Ozu’s film, it’s really the feisty Yuriko (Mariko Okada), the representative of the younger generation who sorts out all the tangled threads that the meddling older generation has gotten snared in. At this point I feel the comparisons getting strained, but it’s always fun to let differing films sort themselves out.

#Late Autumn #Yasujiro Ozu #Yoko Tsukasa #Setsuko Hara #Ryuji Kita #Shin Saburi #Nobuo Nakamura #1960

My picks for the Best 5 Films of 1951. The ninety-fourth of many randomly selected years to come. Previous year highlighted was 2024. This project is so much 🤩 fun! I plan on doing every year back to 1921.) - Home stretch

#ace in the hole #kirk douglas #billy wilder #early summer #setsuko hara #yasujiro ozu #the lavender hill mob #alec guinness #strangers on a train #alfred hitchcock #the day the earth stood still #robert wise #klaatu #gort #Spotify

#setsuko hara #hara setsuko #原節子 #yasujiro ozu #ozu yasujiro #小津安二郎 #cinema #stills #japanese #asian #behind the scenes #my uploads

晩春 (Late Spring) —1949, dir. Yasujirō Ozu

#晩春 #late spring #setsuko hara #yasujirō ozu #dailyworldcinema #classicfilmblr #classicfilmsource #dailyflicks #fyeahmovies #moviegifs #filmgifs #filmedit #movieedit #film #japanese film #japanese cinema #mine

I... I want to stay this way. I don't want to go anywhere. Being with you is enough. I'm happy just as I am. I doubt marriage will make me happier than this. This is the life I want. SETSUKO HARA as Noriko Somiya 晩春 (Late Spring) 1949 | dir. Yasujirō Ozu

Here’s to the Young Lady (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1949)

Setsuko Hara and Shuji Sano in Here’s to the Young Lady

Cast: Shuji Sano, Setsuko Hara, Takeshi Sakamoto, Keiji Sada, Chieko Higashiyama, Masami Morikawa, Junji Masuda, Yasushi Nagata, Fusako Fujima, Sugisaku Aoyama, Sachiko Murase. Screenplay: Keisuke Kinoshita. Cinematography: Hiroshi Kusuda. Art direction: Motoji Kojima. Film editing: Yoshi Sugihara, Shizuko Osawa. Music: Chuji Kinoshita.

The meeting of a working-class man and a young woman from the upper classes is a romantic cliché so irresistible that Samuel Goldwyn once ordered a screenplay to be written on the basis of a title alone, The Cowboy and the Lady (H.C. Potter, 1938), and it inspired the teaming of Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. But what sets Keisuke Kinoshita’s Here’s to the Young Lady apart is its country and time of origin: postwar Japan. In part the film is a manifestation of the occupying forces’ desire to bring about a more egalitarian Japan, one in which a system of caste and class would be broken down, but it’s also a reflection of economic reality in a recovering country whose male population had been decimated by the war. So Keizo Ishizu (Shuji Sano), a 34-year-old man who owns a thriving auto repair business and has dreams of getting into manufacturing, is introduced by his friend Sato (Takeshi Sakamoto) to Yasuko Ikeda (Setsuko Hara), from a cultured and educated family, as a potential wife. Ishizu is smitten instantly by the lovely but very shy young woman, but he also has doubts that she would ever be interested in him – and he is sort of a schlub, whose chief recreation is drinking at his favorite bar. But then Ishizu visits Yasuko at her home and meets her family, learning that they are on the brink of financial disaster. Kinoshita starts with mostly long shots of the living room of the Ikeda home, but then switches to some shots from Ishizu’s point of view that reveal the threadbare upholstery and well-worn furnishings. It turns out that Yasuko’s father is in prison because after the war he was tricked into joining a company that was on the shady side. When its fraudulent practices were exposed, he honorably took the blame, though it’s suggested that he was ignorant of them. Moreover, a loan is about to come due, one that was taken out to help the family – which includes Yasuko’s mother, grandparents, sister and brother-in-law – to survive. Ishizu has every reason to flee from this entanglement, but he’s so taken with Yasuko that he agrees to court her for a while to see if their marriage would work out. She suggests that they go to the ballet, where he winds up in tears – partly because he realizes that he can never be a match for her in culture. He takes her to a boxing match, where she winces at the violence but nevertheless winds up cheering for one of the fighters. And so on as obstacles to their marriage rise. We know how it will end, but Kinoshita makes that ending almost plausible, especially with the help of a talented cast that features the always magnificent Setsuko Hara. One blot on the film is the overbearing and sometimes inappropriate use of Chuji Kinoshita’s repetitive score, augmented by the overuse of Chopin’s Fantaisie-Impromptu in C# minor, the one spoiled for many of us by its use as the melody for the popular song “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows.”

#Here’s to the Young Lady #Keisuke Kinoshita #1949 #Setsuko Hara #Shuji Sano