“The beginning of the classic Ozu in which only the most ordinary things happen in a very moving way.”--Audie Bock, “Japanese Film Directors.”
In Late Spring, a widowed father realizes that his daughter spurns marriage in order to remain with him. He allows her to think that he plans to remarry, though he has no intention of doing so, and she finally accepts an offer of marriage herself. Their farewell trip to Kyoto must be numbered among Ozu's most moving sequences, and critic Donald Richie is not alone in considering Late Spring “one of the most perfect, most complete, and most successful studies of character ever achieved in the Japanese cinema.”