Early Summer (The Criterion Collection)

EARLY SUMMER is not Ozu's greatest film, it is merely my personal favorite. The reason is simple: Noriko Mamiya, played by the incandescent Setsuko Hara, is one of the most fascinating, perverse, and peculiar female characters in all of world cinema. Every viewing of EARLY SUMMER peels away new layers of her guilelessness, revealing more and more quiet audacity.Noriko lives with her brother (Koichi), his wife, her elderly parents, and her brother's bratty young sons. She dresses in simple western styles and works as a typist. Koichi is an imperious man with old-fashioned ideas about the role of women, and he intimidates the whole family. Except Noriko. Not that she is ever defiant towards him, she has simply mastered the art of smiling deferentially and continuing along her own inscrutable path in life.Her family, friends, neighbors, and professional associates all take note of her age (28!) and begin to pester her about getting married before it is too late: Noriko smiles deferentially at every suggestion, insinuation, or act of coercion. There is even some speculation that she might be a lesbian.One member of her family is unable to advise Noriko, and that is Shoji, her older brother who has been M. I. A. since the war and is presumed (by any reasonable standard) to be dead. Ozu is a master of evoking what is out of frame, continually reminding us that there is an unseen world that interacts with what he allows us to see. The absent and lovingly remembered Shoji turns out to be a force that points Mamiya to her groom, a man who unites the family in his absolute unsuitability for Noriko. In my favorite scene, Noriko denies to her friend Aya that she is in love with her intended--and then describes her exact feelings for him in words that perfectly define the phenomenon of being in love.The new subtitles by Donald Ritchie are only at times preferable to the ones on older prints. On the one hand, the bawdiness of some of the dialogue is much more clear in Ritchie's translation, but on the other hand the titles have become far more prosaic. Sadly, the two best lines in the film have had all the poetry sucked out of them in this version. I will give you the original translations, and you can read Ritchie's for yourself. When Koichi finds his two sons abusing a loaf of bread, the translation of his outburst used to read, "Don't kick food!"Lastly, when the two elderly Mamiyas share a sandwich in a park, they see a toy balloon floating off into the sky. In a perfect distillation of Yasujiro Ozu's ability to draw our attention to what is off screen, the husband's line of dialogue used to be, "Somewhere a child is crying." Maybe Ritchie's is more accurate, but that was one line he should never have touched.

An absolute masterpiece. This is another take on the issue of 'Late Spring'(of which I wrote another review): How family changes along with the times.It's NOT about the rights of women to decide whom to marry, or anything of that sort. Visually, I prefer 'Late Spring', but 'Early Summer' has a lot more issues and more depth in its narative. It really would take a whole book to tell all that this film points to, if it were at all possible. How can you you describe colors to someone who's born blind? That's why some people will say this is about women's rights. (The same kind of people who'd say that Jesus was a great philosopher -but not God- when, evidently, he was either God incarnate or a mad man)."And Jesus said: 'For judgement I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be blind'. Then some of the Pharisees who were with Him heard these words, and said to Him, 'Are we blind also?' Jesus said to them, 'If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, 'We see'. Therefore your sin remains." (John 9:39-41)For this reason I give up any hope of contributing to this film's understanding. Nothing better than the film itself. Simply stated: If you don't get to love this story, these characters, you have a spiritual malfunction.The female protagonist, Setsuko Hara, is just lovable and wonderful. I can't imagine her doing any other role but those she does in Ozu's films. She is that natural. There are 3 generations in this family here; the newest one we are spoiling it. Too much love and no discipline is no good. Watch the symbolic scene where the grandpa gives candy to the little one. See the results. Watch how grandpa reacts. He laughs. Yes, we are bringing our own destruction, day by day, and yet we laugh. Is it our fate, or can we do something about it?

Met our needs. We are Japanophiles

The almost perfect Ozu movie - Sets'ko Hara (in her second 'Noriko' role), Chishu Ryu and Harako Sugumura are extraordinary; and Kunido Miyake and Hiroshi Nihonyanage lead a large cast of secondary characters, all of whom are vivid in their own ways. Set in Ozu's Kamakura City, and a hospital in Tokyo where two of the characters are doctors, the pace of the film is quiet, intersecting stands rising and fallingAt the time of its making, 1951, arranged marriages were still very common in Japan, and often successful. As late as the Studio Ghibli Omoide Poro Poro of 1991 there is an echo of a famous scene in Early Summer - when a rural grandmother explicitly suggests to a visiting city girl that she should marry her grandson (finally she does). In Early Summer itself, the mother of a widower neighbour tells Noriko that she had a 'dream' that Noriko might marry her son - to which a deeply moved Noriko says "You'd have me?" - the widowed son is never consulted, his mother simply announcing it will happen!But there are many more strands in Early Summer - ranging from the high cost of strawberry cake and household economies, to the breaking up of families. As always in Ozu, the 'big' events such as weddings happen off screen - though Early Summer ends with the parents moving to a farmhouse near Nara (in 'Yamato') where in the closing scene they watch a wedding party thread their way through the fields...

なんか最近の日本映画は全然見る気がしないので。細かいところに違和感はあるがよいのでは。

原節子と淡島千景らのリズミカルで軽妙な会話や、珍しく年相応な役で出演している笠智衆と杉村晴子の安定感、生き生きとした子供達など、見所は沢山ありますがモチーフが「晩春」の変奏であることや、あまり深みを感じないので星４つ。

最初の部分で飛ぶ所がありましたが始まって５分もするとなくなり概ね良好に見ることができました。飛ぶところ以外は画像もしっかりしていて問題ありませんでした。

小津さんの映画の中で好きな映画の一つです。笠さんが原さんのお兄さん役というのが珍しく、若々しくて、却って演技が上手いように感じました。最後の麦畑を撮す場面は風情がありました。

家で見るために購入しました。戦前の方達の佇まいや、話す言葉の美しさに、とても感動しました。現代の人々にも是非観て貰いたい作品だと思いました。