Yasujiro Ozu-Akibiyori ('Late Autumn') (1960)

The lightest variant on Ozu's favourite theme. Instead of a father/daughter relationship, it focuses on a widow and the daughter who finds even the thought of her mother's remarriage offensive. There are new touches here: the comic chorus of old rogues trying to sort out both women's future and Mariko Okada as the 'modern miss' who cuts through tradition to ensure a happy ending. She's proof that not all Ozu's characters are meek and passive. OzuFilms




The great actress and Ozu regular Setsuko Hara plays a mother gently trying to persuade her daughter to marry in this glowing portrait of family love and conflict—a reworking of Ozu's 1949 masterpiece Late Spring. Criterion




Director Yasujiro Ozu (1903-63) was famous for dramas which focused tightly on the character of family members and friends making sacrifices for one another's happiness. In Akibiyori, a still-beautiful widow has a daughter who is sufficiently past the favored age for marriage to be in danger of becoming an old maid according to the norms of Japanese culture. Three mature men, friends of the family, get together to discuss the widow and her problem daughter. Despite the fact that they each would like to marry the mother, they agree that one of them should make the sacrifice of marrying the daughter. They discuss their marriage idea with the mother, not the daughter (as is customary). Somehow, the girl hears of it, and is infuriated. She has said all along that though she wants to get married someday, she wants to remain single for some time longer. Now she is angry enough to threaten to accept the family friend's suit simply out of spite. DVDAsian