Yasujiro Ozu

11/23/03 to 12/21/03

  • Good Morning, December 20|© Shochiku

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Past Films

  • Floating Weeds

    • Sunday, December 21 2:30 pm

    Glorious color photography by Kazuo Miyagawa brings new intensity to this remake of Ozu's 1934 story about a traveling actor encountering his illegitimate son.

  • The End of Summer

    • Sunday, December 21 5:30 pm

    This chronicle of a sake-brewing family combines humorous touches with an acute awareness of mortality. "One of Ozu's most beautiful films, it is one of his most disturbing."-Donald Richie

  • Late Autumn

    • Saturday, December 20 4:00 pm

    Coming full circle from Late Spring, Setsuko Hara plays a widowed mother pushing her unwilling daughter to marry. "Exquisite and not to be missed."-New Republic

  • Good Morning

    • Saturday, December 20 2:00 pm

    Ozu's "bad boys" strike again! This reworking of I Was Born, But... is a genial comedy of manners centered around an icon of 1950s domesticity: the television set.

  • Tokyo Twilight

    • Friday, December 19 7:00 pm

    In his last black-and-white film, Ozu tackles issues of abortion and suicide, depicting the disintegration of a family with unexpected toughness.

  • The Munekata Sisters

    • Friday, December 19 9:40 pm

    A liberated young woman tries to reunite her more conservative older sister with a former flame in this atmospheric study of tradition and modernity in postwar Japan.

  • The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice

    • Thursday, December 18 7:00 pm

    A series of extraordinarily revealing domestic details forms a portrait of middle-class marriage, domestic tension, and reconciliation.

  • Equinox Flower

    • Thursday, December 18 9:15 pm

    Teenage girls quietly rebel against their traditional parents' plans. "Gentle and amused in the way that it acknowledges time's passage, the changing of values, and the adjustments that have to be made between generations."-N.Y. Times

  • Early Spring

    • Wednesday, December 17 7:30 pm

    A salaryman's marriage is threatened when, stifled by routine, he indulges in an affair. Observing the subtle rituals and rhythms of the work day, "I wanted to...let the viewer experience the peculiar sadness of the office man's existence."-Ozu

  • Passing Fancy

    • Sunday, December 14 5:30 pm

    Joel Adlen on Piano. Inspired by King Vidor's The Champ, a vivacious comedy of a single father whose young son disapproves of his brief love affair.

  • A Story of Floating Weeds

    • Sunday, December 14 7:30 pm

    Joel Adlen on Piano. This poetic, quietly devastating story finds the leader of a down-at-heels theater troupe meeting his grown son, the fruit of a casual affair years earlier. "A picture of great atmosphere and intensity of character."-Donald Richie

  • Early Summer

    • Saturday, December 13 4:00 pm

    "I was interested in getting much deeper than just the story itself; I wanted to depict the cycles of life, the transience of life" (Ozu). An exquisite, faintly melancholy portrait of a family, with Setsuko Hara as the daughter on whose marriage everything depends.

  • A Hen in the Wind

    • Saturday, December 13 7:00 pm

    A former POW comes home to Japan to discover that his wife has prostituted herself to pay their son's hospital bills. "Ozu brilliantly and honestly confronts the postwar moment."-Joan Mellen

  • The Record of a Tenement Gentleman

    • Friday, December 12 9:20 pm

    An unsentimental and funny treatment of a sentimental subject: an abandoned boy in postwar Japan taken in by a widow who claims to dislike children.

  • There Was a Father

    • Friday, December 12 7:30 pm

    This sensitive drama about the separation of a widowed father and his son echoes Ozu's own experience. "Ozu's last masterpiece...almost excruciatingly sublimated."-Noel Burch

  • Woman of Tokyo

    • Thursday, December 11 7:30 pm

    Judith Rosenberg on Piano. This Depression-era romantic melodrama is "a subtle riot of discordant formal devices....Ozu never made another film like this one, and neither has anyone else."-Village Voice

  • A Mother Should Be Loved

    • Thursday, December 11 8:40 pm

    Judith Rosenberg on Piano. On the death of their father, brothers discover they had different mothers. A very rare film, demonstrating Ozu's impeccable skill at domestic melodrama.

  • The Lady and the Beard

    • Tuesday, December 9 7:00 pm

    Joel Adlen on Piano. A gleefully ribald comedy about a collegian kendo swordfighter who passionately loves his beard and despises all modern ways. But then he shaves....

  • Tokyo Chorus

    • Tuesday, December 9 8:35 pm

    Joel Adlen on Piano. Acerbic satire and flawlessly timed slapstick enliven this tragicomedy of an office worker who gets fired for defying his boss.

  • Dragnet Girl

    • Sunday, December 7 7:00 pm

  • That Night's Wife

    • Sunday, December 7 5:30 pm

    Judith Rosenberg on Piano. A crime melodrama inspired by Fritz Lang and American thrillers. As ever, Ozu tests the conventions as he employs them.

  • What Did the Lady Forget?

    • Saturday, December 6 3:00 pm

    A thoroughly modern niece disrupts the lives of a professor and his socialite wife in this splendid satire on Tokyo's suburban bourgeoisie. "Wry, affectionate, and ironic."-Donald

  • The Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family

    • Saturday, December 6 4:35 pm

    The death of a patriarch leaves his family in a financial bind. Ozu prefigures Tokyo Story in this tale of children too preoccupied with their own affairs to care for relatives in need.

  • An Inn at Tokyo

    • Friday, December 5 7:30 pm

    A laid-off factory worker hits the road with his two sons in this beautifully observed film. "Probably the masterpiece of Ozu's silent period."-Noel Burch

  • The Only Son

    • Friday, December 5 9:10 pm

    In Ozu's first sound feature, a small-town widow sacrifices everything so her son can better himself in Tokyo; visiting him, she faces bitter disappointment. "A small masterpiece of haunting grace and economy."-Village Voice.

  • Woman of Tokyo

    • Thursday, December 4 5:30 pm

    Free Screening! Joel Adlen on Piano. This Depression-era romantic melodrama is "a subtle riot of discordant formal devices....Ozu never made another film like this one, and neither has anyone else."-Village Voice. Repeated on December 11.

  • Walk Cheerfully

    • Thursday, December 4 7:00 pm

    Joel Adlen on Piano. Stylish comedy set in a world of petty thieves, con men, and flappers.

  • I Flunked, But...

    • Thursday, December 4 9:00 pm

    Joel Adlen on Piano. Ozu finds infectious humor in Depression-era realities.

  • Tokyo Story

    • Sunday, November 30 2:00 pm

    This simple, sad story of the gap between generations in a Japanese family revealed to Western viewers the poetic acuteness of Ozu's style. "Wonderful....One of the manifest miracles of cinema."-The New Yorker

  • I Was Born, But...

    • Sunday, November 30 5:30 pm

    Judith Rosenberg on Piano. A comedy about a typical wage-earner with two delightfully atypical sons. "One of the wisest and most charming films ever made."-Village Voice

  • Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth?

    • Sunday, November 30 7:25 pm

    Judith Rosenberg on Piano. Depression-era college comedy "moves seamlessly through farce to melancholy."-Hong Hong Film Festival

  • Late Spring

    • Saturday, November 29 2:00 pm

    Chishu Ryu and Setsuko Hara as father and daughter in a deceptively simple, eloquent story of filial devotion and parental sacrifice. A near-perfect film, and one of Ozu's own favorites.

  • An Autumn Afternoon

    • Saturday, November 29 4:10 pm

    Chishu Ryu once again plays a widowed father planning to marry off his daughter in Ozu's beautiful, bittersweet last film. "Quietly tears your heart to pieces."-Terence Davies

  • Tokyo Story

    • Friday, November 28 3:30 pm

    This simple, sad story of the gap between generations in a Japanese family revealed to Western viewers the poetic acuteness of Ozu's style. "Wonderful....One of the manifest miracles of cinema."-The New Yorker

  • Tokyo Story

    • Friday, November 28 6:40 pm

  • Days of Youth

    • Sunday, November 23 5:30 pm

    Joel Adlen on Piano. Ozu's early high-spirited college comedy shows the influence of Lloyd and Lubitsch. With shorts A Straightforward Boy and I Graduated, But...