Film – An Autumn Afternoon

35mm Presentation. Evocative of a seasonal tide—its Japanese title meaning “the taste of sanma,” a type of mackerel eaten in autumn—Ozu’s final picture concentrates on a widower’s reluctance to let go of his only daughter, now of age to marry. Approaching his twilight years, quiet salaryman Hirayama (Chishu Ryu) lives comfortably with daughter Michiko (Shima Iwashita), but a number of occurrences leads him to contemplate whether he may be in the way of Michiko’s happiness. Conveying Ozu’s reflections on modernity and tradition through several outlets—as is the case with a set of circulating golf clubs (much to the discontentment of Mariko Okada’s fussy Akiko)—An Autumn Afternoon progresses in due course, revealing the natural ebb and flow of things, and the inevitable loneliness of it all. A bittersweet farewell, both to a master and to such formative stages in life, Ozu’s last film aligns with his deepest preoccupations—a meditation, like all of his great works, on the human condition.

Dir. Yasujiro Ozu, 1962, 113 min., 35mm, color, in Japanese with English subtitles. With Chishu Ryu, Shima Iwashita, Keiji Sada, Mariko Okada.