Yasujiro Ozu: The Elegance of Simplicity

December 3, 2023–February 25, 2024

One of Japan's greatest filmmakers, Yasujiro Ozu was born in 1903 and died in 1963. To mark the 120th anniversary of his birth and the 60th anniversary of his death, archives around the world are celebrating his work. BAMPFA presents a selected retrospective spanning the course of the director’s career from the silent era to his six crowning films made in color.

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  • Late Spring

  • An Autumn Afternoon

  • Dragnet Girl

  • A Story of Floating Weeds

  • I Was Born, But . . .

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • An Autumn Afternoon

    • Sunday, February 25 2 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1962

    Chishu Ryu once again plays a widowed father planning to marry off his daughter in Yasujiro Ozu’s beautiful, bittersweet last film. “Quietly tears your heart to pieces” (Terence Davies).

  • The End of Summer

    • Friday, February 23 7 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1961

    Imported 35mm Print

    This chronicle of a sake-brewing family combines humorous touches with an acute awareness of mortality. “One of [Yasujiro] Ozu’s most beautiful films, it is one of his most disturbing” (Donald Richie).

  • Late Autumn

    • Sunday, February 18 2 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1960

    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).

  • Floating Weeds

    • Friday, February 16 7 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1959

    Digital Restoration

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

  • Good Morning

    • Sunday, February 11 7 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1959

    Yasujiro 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.

  • Equinox Flower

    • Saturday, February 3 7 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1958

    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” (New York Times).

  • The Only Son

    • Sunday, January 28 3 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1936

    In Yasujiro 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).

  • Tokyo Twilight

    • Friday, January 26 7 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1957

    Digital Restoration

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

  • Early Spring

    • Saturday, January 20 4 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1956

    Digital Restoration

    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, Yasujiro Ozu explained, “I wanted to . . . let the viewer experience the peculiar sadness of the office man’s existence.”

  • The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice

    • Thursday, January 18 7 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1952

    Digital Restoration

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

  • Early Summer

    • Saturday, January 13 6:30 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1951

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

  • A Hen in the Wind

    • Thursday, December 21 7 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1948

    Digital Restoration

    A former POW comes home to Japan to discover that his wife has prostituted herself to pay their son’s hospital bills. “[Yasujiro] Ozu brilliantly and honestly confronts the postwar moment” (Joan Mellen).

  • A Story of Floating Weeds

    • Sunday, December 17 2 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1934

    Copresented by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival

    This poetic, quietly devastating story finds the leader of a down-at-the-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).

    Judith Rosenberg on Piano

  • Tokyo Story

    • Saturday, December 16 6:30 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1953

    Digital Restoration

    Voted one of the ten Greatest Films of All Time in the 2022 Sight & Sound Directors’ Poll

    This simple, sad story of the gap between generations in a Japanese family revealed to Western viewers the poetic acuteness of Yasujiro Ozu’s style. “Wonderful. . . . One of the manifest miracles of cinema” (New Yorker).

  • Late Spring

    • Wednesday, December 13 7 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1949

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

  • Dragnet Girl

    • Sunday, December 10 4:30 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1933

    Copresented by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival

    In Yasujiro Ozu’s atmospheric American-style crime melodrama, Kinuyo Tanaka brings a wide range of moods and emotions to the role of a gangster’s moll trying to get herself and her lover/accomplice out of their murky world and into “a decent life.”

    Judith Rosenberg on Piano

  • That Night’s Wife & Woman of Tokyo

    • Friday, December 8 7 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1930

    Copresented by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival

    That Night’s Wife is a crime melodrama inspired by Fritz Lang and American thrillers. As ever, Yasujiro Ozu tests the conventions as he employs them. Screening with Woman of Tokyo, a Depression-era romantic melodrama that is “a subtle riot of discordant formal devices. . . . Ozu never made another film like this one, and neither has anyone else” (J. Hoberman).

    Judith Rosenberg on Piano

  • I Was Born, But . . .

    • Sunday, December 3 4:30 PM
    Yasujiro Ozu
    Japan, 1932

    Copresented by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival

    A comedy about a typical wage earner with two delightfully atypical sons. “One of the wisest and most charming films ever made” (Village Voice).

    Judith Rosenberg on Piano