SYNOPSICS
An Autumn Afternoon (1962) is a Japanese movie. Yasujirô Ozu has directed this movie. Chishû Ryû,Shima Iwashita,Keiji Sada,Mariko Okada are the starring of this movie. It was released in 1962. An Autumn Afternoon (1962) is considered one of the best Drama movie in India and around the world.
In the early 60's in Tokyo, the widower Hirayama is a former captain from the Japanese navy that works as a manager of a factory and lives with his twenty-four year-old daughter Michiko and his son Kazuo in his house. His older son Koichi is married with Akiko that are compulsive consumers and Akiko financially controls their expenses. Hirayama frequently meets his old friends Kawai and Professor Horie, who is married with a younger wife, to drink in a bar. When their school teacher Sakuma comes to a reunion of Hirayama with old school mates, they learn that the old man lives with his daughter that stayed single to take care of him. Michiko lives a happy life with her father and her brother, but Hirayama feels that it is time to let her go and tries to arrange a marriage for her.
Same Actors
An Autumn Afternoon (1962) Reviews
Ozu's Great Swan Song
This is Ozu's last film, and it is wonderful. At first, I wondered if it could be even good. It has similar themes of other, amazing films like "Late Spring" and "Early Summer", both of which had the truly amazing actress Setsuko Hara, who is not in this film. However, this film is just about as great as them, since it has one of the best acting performances of terrific Ozu regular Chishu Ryu. He plays the father, a widower with three children, two sons and a daughter. It is no surprise to me that the daughter Michiko, played by Shima Iwashita and Akiko the daughter in law, played by Mariko Okada, have had such long, varied careers in cinema. They are great in their roles. There is a certain sass to both of them which really comes across in their characters. They are also both beautiful. The story also has a great sideline, in which Mr. Ryu's old friends help out an teacher, nicknamed "The Gourd". From there, you meet the teacher's daughter Tanako, a familiar face to all Ozu fans. I was deeply affected by Tomako, even though her role is small. I feel her sadness and loneliness. Another great scene is when the father meets up with an old armed services buddy and they go to a local bar and play a war march. They are a bit drunk, and they salute. Playing the barmaid is the great actress Kyoko Kishida, star of the great "Manji" and "Woman In The Dunes". I was deeply interested in the lives of these people, and find the film to be just wonderful, displaying the emotions that a great Ozu film possesses. This film is profoundly moving. I would not start with this film as an introduction to Ozu, only because "Tokyo Story", "Late Spring" and "I Was Born, But" are such masterpieces, but this ranks with them. A deeply profound, excellent epitaph from Yasojiro Ozu, one of the greatest directors ever, from anywhere at any time. See it, you will not be disappointed. Rest in peace, Yasojiro Ozu.
An experience that will last a lifetime
An Autumn Afternoon, the final film by the great Yasujiro Ozu, is a portrayal of family interaction and conflict that provides a moving summation of a career that produced 53 films in 60 years. Similar in theme to his 1949 film Late Spring, a widowed father, Shuhei Hirayama, portrayed by the wonderful Chishu Ryu, wants his 24-year old daughter, Michiko, (Shima Iwashima) to marry but fears loneliness. After the death of her mother, as is traditional in Japanese families, Michiko has assumed her role, taking care of household chores and making sure that her father's needs are met. She feels no urge to marry and prefers to remain at home. Much of An Autumn Afternoon consists of small vignettes of family life. One of these involves Hirayama's son Koichi (Keiji Sada) and his wife Akiko (Mariko Okada. Both seem to mirror the encroaching consumer values of the new Tokyo lit up with neon lights, Coca-Cola signs, and rooftop golf. They bicker about finances, borrow money from their parents, and talk about buying expensive golf clubs and leather handbags on installment. The film has moments of delightful humor. Hirayama spends a great amount of time at a bar run by a woman who looks like his former wife, reminiscing about the good old days and listening to a military march from World War II. In one of the funniest scenes, he talks to a former shipmate who tells him that if Japan had won the war, American women would be playing Japanese musical instruments and wearing geisha style wigs and they both agree that it was better that Japan lost. When one of Hirayama's employees tells him she is leaving to get married, he begins to wonder whether or not it is also the time for Michiko. When Hirayama's friend Kawai (Nobuo Nakamura) proposes a match for Michiko, however, he does not tell his daughter about it, thinking there is plenty of time. The situation is crystallized when he has a reunion with an old school teacher Sakuma, (Eijiro Tono) known as "The Gourd" and notices how guilty his friend feels for not insisting that his daughter Tomoko marry when she had the opportunity. The result is an acceptance of the inevitable and the sadness that goes along with it. As An Autumn Afternoon ends, the camera pans around an empty room. We see an old man sitting on a chair, his head in his hands, weeping quietly. In his final moment of grace, Ozu has given us another experience that will last a lifetime.
A true work of art.
When I first saw this film it struck me as being a very unusual and odd little movie. The camera work was direct and straightforward, as if the director were composing a still life painting. With the passage of time I remembered this film not as a whole but as a series of vignettes, the sailor marching in the bar, the unrequited lovers waiting for a train on the platform, the father staring into his daughter's empty room. I have recently seen An Autumn Afternoon again, and was not disappointed. Each scene has an almost indescribable longing, an ephemeral quality that speaks to the beauty and sadness of everyday life. I love this film, it is a true work of art.
Ozu's most visually beautiful film - a masterpiece
Ozu's final film is his most visually beautiful, and among his most somber. Aside from "Tokyo Story," "Late Spring" and "A Story of Floating Weeds," this is my favorite Ozu film. There are several stories at work in this movie, but the primary involves a middle-aged father whose adult daughter is reluctant to marry. Long detached from her, the father realizes, only too late, that with her departure, goes the happiest chapter of his life. Ozu's style is extremely refined at this point, and "An Autumn Afternoon" shows the director at the height of his artistic prowess. As such, this movie is a terrific introduction to Ozu, and it is a rewarding farewell for fans. Visually speaking, this one is a stunner, and every frame of the movie is a stand-alone composition. Many of the Ozu stock company make appearances, including Chishu Ryu and Keiji Sada, as well as some new faces, such as Kyoko Kishida from "Woman in the Dunes." The story is a classic Ozu meditation on family, marriage, and nostalgia, and the ending is among his most remorseful. If you appreciate Ozu or are just curious about this quiet master, "An Autumn Afternoon" is a great choice. This film is a serene, graceful masterpiece.
The beauty of things
I can whole-heartedly relate to previous reviewers' sentiments about this movie. From my own perspective it is also an awesome celebration of beauty. The theme is the same Ozu's favorite—separation of father and his grown-up daughter-- however it is presented in a different, less nerve-wrecking and more humorous way (as compared to Late Spring), but most of all -- within the colorful kaleidoscope of everyday things looking as works of art in themselves. Ozu rejoices in showing the beauty of such mundane objects as mugs, bowls, kimonos, tables, lamp shades, houses, fences, even industrial chimneys and such. Colors and shapes are arranged into perfect compositions and sometimes it seems that still objects actually govern the mood and the flow of people around them. The parallel with Tarkovskij's movies, like Solaris and Stalker, where the harmony of individual objects creates its own layer of movie symbolism, seems natural, only Russian movies were shot more than a decade later. I watched An Autumn Afternoon several times with the same joyful interest and gratitude for the gift of showing us the beauty of everyday life.