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Tokyo Story | Chishu Ryu sows the seeds of unhappiness, despite the best of intentions, in Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Spring.

LATE SPRING
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu. Starring Setsuko Hara, Chishu Ryu, Haruko Sugimura, Yumeji Tsukioka. Metro Cinema (Zeidler Hall, The Citadel). Thu-Fri, Sun-Mon, Nov 26-27, 29-30.
*****

The films of Yasujiro Ozu are as known for their immaculate composition — every shot as precisely organized as a photograph, every face and body painstakingly lit — as for their content. It’s not hard to see why. Ozu has a filmmaking style that’s both disarming and thrillingly exotic. He places his camera just a foot or two off the ground and lets the action unfold at the far end of a hallway; he transitions between scenes with a few tangential shots of objects and buildings, then drops you smack into someplace brand new.

And yet all the talk of Ozu’s technical innovations seems almost unfair in a way, since it distracts from his formidable talents as a storyteller. To say that a film like 1949’s Late Spring is impeccably shot is to leave the glass half-empty. Actually, more than half-empty, since without the fragile, tender, and extremely nuanced story at the film’s heart, there wouldn’t be much reason to keep watching, aside from a mechanical kind of beauty.

When the two halves are put together, though, it makes for a riveting feat of alchemy — a film that many consider to be Ozu’s masterpiece.

Late Spring centres on Noriko (Setsuko Hara), a 27-year-old woman whose days are spent looking after her middle-aged professor father, the moustachioed, wafer-thin Somiya (Chishu Ryu). He’s not senile, or even immobile — Noriko acts more as a maid than caregiver, ironing his shirts and playfully withholding tea until his work is complete. (It’s suggested that his wife, Noriko’s mother, is dead, but details are scarce.) What’s important is that the two live together, and they’re happy.

Happy, that is, until Somiya’s sister plants the idea in his head that Noriko really ought to be married off by now, and both Noriko and Somiya give their uneasy consent to start sending in the suitors. Set in post-war Japan, Late Spring exists in a time of massive cultural upheaval, but that classic stigma of the old maid still holds sway.

For all its visual flourishes — and they are stunning — the No. 1 thing you’ll take away from this movie is the oh-so-fake smile that’s plastered across Noriko’s face for much of the running time. She never quite allows herself to drop her mask of social pleasantries: not when calling a friend of her father’s second marriage disgusting, not when arguing with her liberated friend Aya (Yumeji Tsukioka), and not even when lying in bed in the dark. She knows that no marriage can make her as happy as she is right now, but the wheels have already been set in motion. All she can do is literally grin and bear it.

Adding to the complexity of the story, which Ozu draws out with masterful control and restraint, is how he keeps audiences on their toes, withholding crucial pieces of information just when we need them most. When Somiya proposes his handsome assistant as a suitor, Noriko bursts out laughing and tells her father that this man is already engaged — but how does she know this? The two were happily flirting not five minutes earlier, and he said nothing of the sort. Ozu knows, but he isn’t telling.

As for the man Noriko does end up with, he never sets a single foot onscreen. We’re merely told that he sort of looks like Hollywood’s Gary Cooper.

It can take a while to adjust to Ozu’s slow pace, and the tricks he plays never fully reveal themselves right away. But if you can get on his wavelength, your patience will be rewarded many times over. Late Spring is a classic for a reason.