An Autumn Afternoon (1962) was to be Yasujiro Ozu's last film and it is very representative of the personal style that was his hallmark. Here we have a story about the dissolving of a family where a widower marries his daughter off. There are the usual "pillow shots" of exteriors, hallways, smokestacks, baseball stadium lights, etc. used to transition between scenes, the low "tatami" camera angle, frontal close ups of characters as they speak, ellipses of major events (in this case a wedding) and artistically framed interior shots. There were a couple remarkable aspects to this film, for example, there was some talk about the war and one character suggests to another that it was a good thing that Japan lost, to which the other agrees. They are vindictive, but merely stating a fact which reflects how easily Japan focused their efforts on modernization rather than war after their defeat. There were several other scenes where women were telling men to do their own chores, and another where a husband is doing the cooking, which is somewhat of a modern conceit and different from the typical homemakers that populate Ozu films. The Criterion DVD also includes an informative commentary featuring David Bordwell, author of Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema, excerpts from "Yasujiro Ozu and The Taste of Sake" a 1978 French television program looking back on Ozu's career, featuring critics Michel Cimet and Georges Percec, and a booklet with new essays by film critic Geoff Andrew and scholar Donald Richie. This is certainly one of Ozu's best and most entertaining films.
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