Late Spring
(Banshun)

Screening on Film

Directed by Yasujiro Ozu.
With Setsuko Hara, Chishu Ryu, Haruko Sugimura.
Japan, 1949, 16mm, black & white, 108 min.
Japanese with English subtitles.

A young woman (Setsuko Hara) who lives happily with her widowed father (Chishu Ryu) will not consider marriage, preferring her state of comfortable dependence to the responsibilities of childbearing and household duties. The father, afraid that she will live a lonely and barren life, leads her to believe that he intends to remarry in order to free her. Through a dispassionate observation of the characters’ environment and emotions, Ozu creates a masterpiece of simplicity and restraint. "The most beautiful Ozu movie I know." (Roger Greenspun, New York Times)