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An Autumn Afternoon
(Samma no Aji)

Introduced by Filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda
Screening on Film
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu.
With Chishu Ryu, Shima Iwashita, Schinichiro Mikami.
Japan, 1962, 35mm, color, 112 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.

Ozu's last film and one of his most sublime, An Autumn Afternoon was undoubtedly influenced by the death, during filming, of his mother, with whom he had lived all his life. The film is suffused with an autumnal sense, evocative of the end of things, that is countered by its gently satirical portrait of contemporary Japan. An Autumn Afternoon returns to a perennial Ozu theme: a widower's decision to marry off his only daughter, despite her objections. Having done the right thing, the old man becomes painfully aware of his isolation and loss, and in the fashion of other disaffected elders within the Ozu universe, finds a measure of solace in drunken comradeship.

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