Tag: 杉村 春子

Late Spring [晩春/Banshun] (1949)

Sometimes It Snows In April

***This Review Contains Spoilers***

For some directors, it can take time before they hit their full stride. Alfred Hitchcock had been directing movies for 25 years prior to directing his most iconic works in the 1950s and ’60s. Correspondingly, Japanese filmmaker, Yasujirō Ozu had been directing for 22 years before he made Late Spring, in my opinion, his magnum opus (although I know others will argue in favour of Tokyo Story) and the beginning of his golden age in which he created a profound series of films about Japanese middle-class domesticity (whereas his work pre-1949 tended to focus more towards poverty-stricken families).

Late Spring is also the first entry of The Noriko Trilogy (alongside Early Summer and Tokyo Story), with all three films starring Setsuko Hara, often named The Eternal Virgin in her country of origin, and it’s not hard to see why. I would defy anyone to watch Late Spring and not fall in love with this capital G Goddess of feminine virtue – with her angelic, shy demeanour emanating a slightly bent over posture alongside a smile that could kill. Late Spring showcases her as an actress of amazing depth and able to convey such deep emotional range in the role of Noriko Somiya. There is somewhat of a contradictory nature to the character of Noriko when it comes to her conservative views. Noriko finds her uncle’s remarrying to be “distasteful” and “impure” and not afraid to say it to his face (albeit in a kindly manner) and can’t bear the idea of her widowed father doing the same thing. Hara is able to portray a character of such saintly purity (it’s even mentioned she does not drink) without it ever becoming sickenly so. Yet contradicting this is the reluctance she holds to get married herself. 

The relationship Noriko shares with her widowed father, Shukichi (Chishū Ryū) is both odd and endearing. She is unemployed and takes joy in looking after her old father, acting as a housewife minus any incestuous implications. Details presented in Late Spring are scant about the character’s histories, allowing the viewer to fill in the blanks. I can assume the young woman would be inclined to share this kind of a relationship with her father due to their time during the war. It is mentioned during the course of the film that Noriko endured forced labour during this period and “had to run around to get food on her day off”, and is required to receive regular blood tests as a result. Chishū Ryū on-the-other-hand feels like he was born an old man, made to look older than he was in all three films of The Noriko Trilogy, and convincingly so.

At the age of 27 and still single, Noriko is approaching the “late spring” of her shelf life, reaching the age she would no longer be considered marriageable, but is unwilling to part from the status-quo arrangement she has with her father. Like a number of Ozu films, the story of Late Spring centers around arranged marriage, although anathema to viewers in the west, it does not detract from the universality of his work. A scene that really hits home for me is that in which Noriko’s aunt Masa (Haruko Sugimura) has a talk with Noriko about marrying. We’ve all been there, when an elder tells us to stop what we are doing and sit down to have a serious chat in which we feel uncomfortable but deep down we know they are correct even if one, like Noriko, signifies their objections but later comes to an eventual acceptance. Noriko’s arranged partner, Mr Kumataro Satake (aka Bear Boy), remains an off screen character, with the only detail passed onto the viewer about his physical appearance is that he looks like Gary Cooper, especially around the mouth but not the top half – allowing the viewer to once again fill in the blanks. 

On a further personal note, I first watched Late Spring at the age of 28, only 1 year older than the character of Noriko, and despite this being a film about a young Japanese women’s pressure to get married in the years following the war, it still spoke to me on the basis that life is passing you by, that change is an inevitable part of life with the pain and heartache which comes with that must be endured. When Noriko speaks to her father at the end of a trip to Kyoto just before the wedding, she speaks of how “I just want to be with you, like this. I don’t want to go anywhere I’m happy being with you like this.” – Just ensure you have a box of Kleenex handy.

When watching any film of Ozu’s later period, the viewer will immediately be put into a great sense of ease with his trademark use of pillow shots (two or three quiet compositions usually showing an architectural detail, a banner in the wind, a tree or the sky) alongside the ever tranquil music scores. Unique however to the opening pillow shots of a railway station in Late Spring is the quaint, English feel to it, aided by the images of a gentle breeze in the leaves and the sound of birds chirping. If I was shown this opening out of context, I could swear it was neo-realist footage of a quiet, remote part of the English countryside. Likewise, the geometric nature of the interior of Japanese homes along with Ozu’s unique style of composition with use of the so called tatami shot is very pleasing to the eyes. This look into another culture extends to the film’s documentary-like aspects as we are treated to slices of everyday post-war Japanese life from kids playing baseball to the inclusion of a Noh play. The westernization present in Japanese films from this period can come off as a shock for first-time viewers of Japanese cinema such as the sight of Tokyo’s classical European architecture as seen in Late Spring.

The scene in which Noriko and Hattori (Jun Usami) go for a recreational cycle by the seaside is the cinematic encapsulation for the joy of living. A scene bustling with freedom and a lust for life with the sight of a smiling Setsuko Hara with her hair blowing in the wind alongside the quirky, upbeat music which accompanies the scene should be in the pantheon of cinema’s most iconic moments. It also contains the unexpected but memorable inclusion of a Coca-Cola sign featured prominently in the foreground – one of the most memorable pieces of product placement I’ve seen in a film. This sign along with another road sign in English warning that the weight capacity of the bridge the duo are riding over is 30 tons (irrelevant information for the two cyclists but necessary for any military vehicles to pass over) could be interpreted as signs to the otherwise unseen US occupation. Concurrently, I believe it’s not unreasonable to assume that Aya’s (Yumeji Tsukioka) ex-husband of whom she speaks of throughout the course of the film is a US serviceman. Aya refers to him by the name “Ken”, which Shukichi assumes is short for “Kenkichi” however Aya never corrects him. The other significant clue is Aya’s difficulty in sitting in a traditional Japanese manner without her legs getting numb, suggesting she has become more used to the western manner of sitting.

The Wikipedia page for Late Spring is bizarrely long and extremely detailed, more famous films have less in-depth articles – the work of an eager fan perhaps? In my research, I have found Late Spring only received its first home video release in the United States in 1994 and the mass availability of the films from this master of cinema has only become reality within the last decade. Perhaps the discovery of Yasujirō Ozu‘s work in the west outside of film circles has only begun?

Floating Weeds [浮草/Ukikusa] (1959)

Seaside Rendezvous

***This Review Contains Spoilers***

There is no other director who can make films quite as relaxing or serene than those of Yasujirō Ozu, emanating from a combination of factors, notably the absence of camera movement to his trademark use of pillow shots (two or three quiet compositions usually showing an architectural detail, a banner in the wind, a tree or the sky). Ozu is known for violating the traditional rules of visual composition such as disregarding both the 360-degree rule and matching eye-line shots while having props leap from one side of a set to another – certainly making me question that which I was taught at film school. Any scene in Floating Weeds (a remake of his own A Story of Floating Weeds from 1934) could be paused just to observe the background décor – I hate to use a cliché phrase, but every frame is a painting. Just look at the scene in the rainy street and the strategic placement of a red umbrella, incorporating the dimensions of the golden ratio. Completing the relaxing flavour of Floating Weeds is the washed-out colour cinematography, the sound of cicadas, the Nino Rota-like music score (which gives the film a European feel) as well as the fact that much of the film involves people lounging wearing kimono in a picture-postcard seaside town (likewise, take a sip of sake every time someone in a Japanese film asks for sake) – you won’t find any other films which are as cosy viewing than the works of Ozu.

At its heart, the premise of Floating Weeds is a lovely romantic, vaudevillian notion of a travelling acting troupe going from town to town. “Floating Weeds” is a Japanese term for itinerant actors and the film plays into the age-old perspective that actors are in the dregs of society and partake in an un-respectful profession (with much of the film’s comedy comes from the hornier actors of the troupe and their wed-locked female prospects). The opening scene establishes that the troupe have come via Okazaki, Kariya and Cape Chita and once played in the Big Kado Theatre in Osaka. It would appear they have been Spinal Tap-ed and fallen on hard times, now they are playing at a theatre in a small seaside town which the previous month had hosted a strip show (you can feel the loss of moral as they are forced to play to an increasingly empty house). The troupe’s stage productions themselves are intriguing to watch even if they’re devoid of full context.

There is no clear time period as to when Floating Weeds takes place. The town itself still uses telegrams from the local post office, there are no other technological references nor is there any mention of movies or TV being a competing force for the acting troupe. Conversely, I do notice one TV aerial appears in a single pillow shot (although the appearance of such could have been an incidental anachronism) and the character of Kiyoshi talks about going to study electronics at college. Regardless, this lack of a clear time period does give Floating Weeds a real timeless quality to it. Which ties into the question, where was Floating Weeds filmed? Where is this beautiful little Japanese seaside town (unlike the original which is set in an inland town)? Sources state the picture was filmed in Japan’s Kii peninsula, yet upon scouring the internet, I can’t find an exact location nor any information about this seaside town.

Komajuro Arashi (Ganjirô Nakamura) is the leader of the acting troupe, an actor from Osaka and a towering, world-weary, alpha figure of a man. Another notable difference from the original is the age difference between Komajuro and his love interest Sumiko (Machiko Kyō). The full nature of their relationship is not made clear but she is involved enough to be upset over the discovery that he is seeing his old flame Oyoshi (Haruko Sugimura) of whom he had a son named Kiyoshi (Hiroshi Kawaguchi). As an act of revenge, she sends her friend and fellow actress Kayo (Ayako Wakao) to seduce Kiyoshi in an effortlessly sexy manner with that unforgettable flick of a pencil. The ending of Floating Weeds is just about perfect as Komajuro and Sumiko meet again after their spilt, where else, but that classic cinematic convention of a train station – one late at night to the sounds of birds in the classic will they/won’t they? scenario. It’s by no means a conventionally happy ending as these two are clearly a flawed couple in a flawed relationship. It’s too late in their lives for happiness and the best they can do is compromise and endure (is it just me or does the film imply Sumiko does sexual favours to others for the couple’s career advancement during the aforementioned scene on the rainy street?). Yet the scene leaves one with a warm feeling, albeit a bittersweet one as the two share a bottle of sake in a railcar as the train disappears into the night to a romantic musical cue.