Yasujiro Ozu-Tôkyô boshoku ('Tokyo Twilight') (1957)

Ozu's last black-and-white film, this is perhaps his darkest and harshest depiction of the disintegration of the family. Ozu regular, Chishu Ryu plays a father living alone with his two daughters. The women discover that their mother, whom they thought dead, is actually living nearby with another man. This shocking information results in despair, destruction and isolation reflecting an extreme pessimism without precedent in Ozu's work. OzuFilms




Ozu"s central themes of family, sadness and transience are revisited again in this buried treasure of minimalist melodrama. The opening scenes of the twilight scenery is marvellously grim, which is totally appropriate for this tale of disintegration of a family. The married elder sister of the family has run away from her alcoholic and abusive husband and return with her child to her parents" home. Her younger sister, who is pregnant and has just been abandoned by her boyfriend, undergoes an abortion before both of them discover a family secret that has devastating result. Hara Setsuko is triumphant in her role as the elder sister who has to go through all the emotions and sufferings of the character. DVDAsian




One of Ozu's most piercing portraits of family strife, Tokyo Twilight follows the parallel paths of two sisters contending with an absent mother, unwanted pregnancy, and marital discord. Criterion