Painful Accuracy
AN AUTUMN by AFTERNOON Directed by YASUJIRO OZU Screenplay by KOGO NODA and YASUJIRO OZU
As he worked on his 53rd and last film in 1963, Yasujiro Ozu may or maynot have known that he was near death from cancer. But An AutumnAfternoon has a feeling of firm, final wisdom and of almosttranscendent serenity. It is a quiet film, but not a delicate one. Theforce of An Autumn Afternoon is inescapable, the strength of insightsaccumulated and stored over a lifetime, fully justifying Ozu'sreputation as the most Japanese of all Japanese directors.
Most of Ozu's work has never been shown in America; one of his finestfilms, Tokyo Story, made in 1953, achieved only a modest and limitedrelease last year. Yet his style, even at first glance, is arrestinglyoriginal. The camera seldom moves; the angle of view is virtuallyconstant. Ozu fixes his camera at slightly above floor level, almost ina reflective posture, observing everything as if from tatami . "It is the attitude for watching, for listening," Film HistorianDonald Richie has written, "the attitude of the haiku master who sitsin silence and with an almost painful accuracy observes cause andeffect, reaching essence through an extreme simplification."
In An Autumn Afternoon, Ozu cuts in for closeups, but does not employany of the traditional optical devices to bridge scenes. That would bea little like throwing a pebble to change the reflection in a stilllake. Instead, he inserts images—a staircase in shadow, an emptyhallway, a narrow, brightly lit street —that not only summarize thetone of the scene just finished but establish the feeling of the one tocome. Like stanzas in a poem, the scenes stand apart, enriched by whatsurrounds them.
The honor and obligation, pride and loyalty of family life—dominant andrecurring themes in Ozu's work—are once again at the core of An AutumnAfternoon. Chishu Ryu, who played the old man in Tokyo Story, ispresent this time as a businessman and widower. He spends most of hisdays away from the office with his cronies, one of whom exults in theinvigorating company of a new young wife, another of whom warns of theinevitable encroachments of age. The businessman flirts with the past,memories of his wife and World War II—and with a sympathetic youngbarmaid. Mostly, though, he is concerned about marrying off hisdaughter, who at 24 is an increasingly less likely prospect formarriage. Finally, he makes a match for her and she departs from home,leaving him to face the long autumn night of mortality.
Resonance and observation are what really matter here, not plot. Ozuexcels at capturing the currents of tenderness and the differencescaused by age and experience that flow, sometimes simultaneously,between parent and child. Watching the old man, slightly bleary withwhisky, leer at the barmaid, his son says: "She doesn't look atall like mother." The old man smiles, a little sly, a little wry.
In a long, poignant sequence, the old man and his businessmen friendshon or their old teacher, nicknamed "the Gourd," who respondsto their tribute by gratefully consuming large quantities of liquor.The men are touched by his almost desperate drunkenness, even as theyfeel threatened by his low es tate and advancing years, so they take up a collectionfor him.
The gift is delivered, politely declined, but left behind anyway. Theteacher tries not to look at the envelope containing the money, andsuddenly lowers his face into his slightly trem bling hands. In thisone motion, Ozu transforms a figure of faintly pathetic fun into atruly tragic individual. It is one measure of the richness of this altogether remarkable film that Ozu is able to show such scenes withoutthe slightest sentimentality, and with a hu mane and unique dignity.
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