Late Summer

Hi Aki,

Tonight: Late Summer, Ozu’s next-to-last movie. Man the colors were bright! They had a pristine print. All the compositions were good, almost all of them were good enough to be paintings.

Again Chishu Ryu was in small part. In fact it was only a cameo, although he delivers a philosophical tagline that sums up what could be the message of the film.

The photography really struck me. I don’t recall so many deep shots in other Ozu films. Lots of halls like tunnels, lots of vanishing lines. Did I just miss this in his other films? Is this a new DP? Hmm.

The last images of the film are striking. Chishu Ryu could have played the lead – the father of the family who was always playing around, and goes off to see his mistress and dies at her house - I wonder if Ozu didn’t want to ‘spoil’ Ryu’s persona having him play the part, or if he just thought he was wrong for it, or if he was interested in mixing up his usual cast. Setsuko Hara is in it, playing the sister of the lovely young actress who played her daughter in Late Autumn, or the last Ozu I saw; these titles drive me nuts.

Anyway, after the funeral of the father, a couple of bystanders, fishing in a nearby stream (a woman and Ryu) comment on life and the dead: ‘If he was old, then it was time, but it would be tragedy if a young person died,’ says the woman. Then Ryu gives the sermon, and they go back to fishing. Then we see three shots of headstones, with big black crows on them, pecking at the stones. Disturbing, not Ozu-like at all.

I wonder if he was feeling like he was going to die soon. Maybe he had been sick. Don’t know.

It’s amazing how he juggled these family dramas, always the same story, with little wrinkles.

One sequence that struck me as really good writing and direction: the youngest sister works at a place, and one of the co-workers is being sent to Sapporo (from Osaka where the movie takes place). So they have a farewell get-together, and finally she and the young man are the last ones to leave, sitting at the train station. Well, the two scenes before this, the office setting up the party, the girl gives a look – you suspect her feelings for whoever is going are rather deep. Then at the party, everybody has a line – except her. And when they are singing, to end the scene, she stumbles over the line, and starts again.

I thought it was interesting as a way to treat the major actor in the scene, to give her no lines of dialogue. Usually actors want the lines, and the writer tries to come up with something clever, some way for her to say goodbye to the guy while revealing other things. Instead it’s done opposite.

But then Ozu does give us the station scene, where the guy just keeps saying, ‘What a great party! I’m going to miss you guys!’

At the movie’s end, the girl decides not to accept the proposal by the guy her family has set her up with. Instead she is going to go to Sapporo. And I don’t know if she means to be the guy’s mistress, or if she plans to marry him. But big sis Setsuko Hara says that’s the right decision, so that must mean marriage, right? Or will she just take a transfer and work in the same office, and maybe never marry?

(23 january 2009)