Early Summer
Alternate title(s):
Foreign Title: Bakushu
Date: January 01, 1951 to December 31, 1951
Dates Note: 1951
Country of Origin:
Japan
Place of Origin: Japan
Languages:
Japanese
Color: B&W
Silent: No
Based On:
Additional Info:
Curator Notes
Film Series/Exhibition Title:
Contemplative Cinema: Ozu's Late FilmsDescription:
The radiant Setsuko Hara is a happily single young woman who, in the eyes of her traditional family, can’t be happy at all until she’s married. Unbeknownst to them, however, she has her eyes set on someone, a widower with a young child. About Early Summer, Ozu stated, "I was interested in getting much deeper than just the story itself; I wanted to depict the cycles of life, the transience of life. . . . Consequently, I didn't force the action, but tried to leave some spaces unfilled . . . leave viewers with a pleasant aftertaste." As Donald Richie notes, "These tiny empty moments are the pores in an Ozu picture through which the movie breathes. They define the film by their emptiness." The "aftertaste" is a bit sad, however; as a daughter marries, a family dissolves, leaving parents alone to contemplate their life and their hopes for the children, to savor transience. Their gaze extends the film beyond the edges of the screen.
Film Series/Exhibition Title:
Japanese Film Classics from the BAMPFA CollectionDescription:
The radiant Setsuko Hara is a happily single young woman who, in the eyes of her traditional family, can’t be happy at all until she’s married. Unbeknownst to them, however, she has her eyes set on someone, a widower with a young child. About Early Summer, Ozu stated, “I was interested in getting much deeper than just the story itself; I wanted to depict the cycles of life, the transience of life. . . . Consequently, I didn’t force the action, but tried to leave some spaces unfilled . . . leave viewers with a pleasant aftertaste.” As Donald Richie noted, “These tiny empty moments are the pores in an Ozu picture through which the movie breathes. They define the film by their emptiness.” The “aftertaste” is a bit sad, however; as a daughter marries, a family dissolves, leaving parents alone to contemplate their life and their hopes for the children, to savor transience. Their gaze extends the film beyond the edges of the screen.
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