Bordwell and Thompson’s Art Cinema and The Idea of Authorship essay discusses the rise of authorship in the 1950s and 1960s, stating that “Auteurism sensitized viewers to narrative experiments that expressed a director’s vision of life. It also prepared viewers to interpret stylistic patterns as the filmmaker’s personal comment on the action”. To be specific, the auteur theory claims that the director’s vision plays the most important role in shaping a film’s theme or visual expression, and the viewer can quickly recognize a director’s consistent styles and aesthetics choices throughout his or her career. One of Japanese greatest directors, Yasujiro Ozu’s most remarkable and noticeable traits lie in the unexpressed lessons beneath his materials’ surface and their ability to touch worldwide audiences. In Devotional Cinema, on discussing the notion of “self-symbol” in which an object possesses a symbolic meaning for its own existence, Nathaniel Dorsky notes that “Yasujiro Ozu is of course a great exponent of self-symbol. Every shot, every cut, every character, every situation of the story, while definitely functioning in the context of a narrative, is not referring to anything but itself. Each moment opens in terms of what actually is”. Without a doubt, each subject presented in Ozu’s film stands as a testimony of its own, and his profound examination of Japanese socio-economic condition through a simple technical and stylistic tendencies further affirms his auteurship. This paper will, therefore, analyze Ozu’s artistic identity through exemplifying the contrast between Eastern and Western values, the traditional and newly emerging beliefs in “Late Spring” (1949), ultimately showing Ozu’s cinematic devotion to portraying the middle-class family, their struggles and deep care for one another.
Utilizing low camera angles, masterful composition and contemplative pacing, Yasujiro Ozu’s idiosyncratic style rebels against the conventional rules of cinema, ultimately evoking a nostalgic and reflexive mood in mundane life events. Unlike his contemporary Akira Kurosawa whose samurai epics are more dramatic and expressive in styles, Ozu’s filmography—spanning over almost 3 decades—triumphs simplicity and melancholy. There always exists a sense of tranquility, ambience of time that Ozu wants to linger and hold onto as long as possible, and his films often invite the viewer into the process of unpacking each layer of meaning beneath all those seemingly empty shots. Ozu’s cinematography does not purposefully manipulate the viewer’s perspective on any singular person, but instead acknowledges the presence of all characters, who seem to be embedded in the same quiet world on screen. Ozu’s iconic shooting techniques can be recognized by his use of static shots and breaking the 180-degree rule with 360-degree, evoking a three-dimensional space inhabiting all characters. Ozu positions his camera point-of-view lower than usual, not only creating a beautiful composition between the foreground and the background, but also honoring the traditional sitting gestures of Japanese people. He cuts directly from one scene to the next, creating an imaginary continuous space after the character leaves a room and enters another, or intertwining separate scenes with "pillow shots" of landscapes, objects, trains and boats. His script only focuses on ordinary people living their daily lives: walking, sleeping, eating or engaging in small conversations. The main conflict in Ozu’s films often occurs among family members, whether it is an elderly couple’s distance from their children in Tokyo Story (1953), or young sons’ disappointment towards their father’s modest status in I Was Born, But.... (1932). Nevertheless, all of his characters are built upon a basis of sensitivity and sympathy towards one another, no matter what hardships they need to endure. Ozu's thorough understanding of the kinship structure and his compassion to the repetition of everyday life give these apparently normal disputes an overwhelming emotional attachment rarely seen in contemporary films. Without a doubt, Ozu lets the complexities of the human condition hidden in the quiet temperance of everyday: On one hand, his meticulously crafted and stylised world displays the obvious rawness; on the other hand, it challenges the viewer’s perception of the banal currents.
Due to clashing ideals between assimilation, adaptation and nostalgia, preservation that Westernization left in post-war Japan, Ozu’s films tend to show the obstacles and stigmas that are imposed on Japanese people. He enriched Late Spring with several Japanese allusions of conventional household and nature elements, ultimately presenting one of the most powerful family portraits on screen, a film profound in the ambiguous. Late Spring’s story about a father-daughter relationship displays the roots of social problems in Japan. Its opening shot capturing a railway station sign with both English and Japanese words, subtly implying the social transformation that Japan was going through. The daughter, Noriko represents the crossroad between traditional and modern values—she has faith in marriages, yet is also stubborn and objects to divorces and remarriages. There are two worlds that Noriko is torn between: the modern belief that a mature girl needs to be get married and the perceived traditions that a daughter continues to take care of her father. The final sequence of Late Spring when Noriko’s father sits alone in an empty house, peeling an apple somehow symbolizes the sad ending of an old-fashioned Japan. Despite all of the efforts in convincing his daughter to get married, he keeps the sorrow and loneliness for himself. The viewer feels an immense respect towards an old man who sets his self-esteem aside to ensure his daughter’s a stable future. Ozu chooses the waves of the sea to end the film, suggesting an everlasting cycle of life, hope and new beginnings. This imagery also points towards a reflection of the land, where people struggle with social transitions, suffer from the concept of departing and sacrificing. An article published on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy also examines this transience of “mono no aware” in Ozu’s films: “A vase standing in the corner of a tatami-matted room where a father and daughter are asleep; two fathers contemplating the rocks in a “dry landscape” garden, their postures echoing the shapes of the stone; a mirror reflecting the absence of the daughter who has just left home after getting married—all images that express the pathos of things as powerfully as the expression on the greatest actor’s face”. In conclusion, Ozu’s films has moved beyond the extreme simplification with sublime metaphors to give the viewer a thoughtful lesson on basic virtues of human beings.
As David Bordwell describes Late Spring as a “largely sombre study of the necessity for father and daughter to part”, it is undeniable to recognize Ozu’s specialization in unpacking family relationships, telling an uncomplicated, yet heartfelt and universal story about a father and daughter’s struggle to reconcile and find each other’s happiness. His films stood the test of time as a reminder for generations after generations to reflect on their traditions, preserve the prosaic and long-established values against the drastic impact of Western acculturation. Regarding Ozu as an auteur not only pays tribute to his exquisite body of works that share the same characteristics, but also affirming the essentialness of the auteur theory in the history of cinema, as it celebrates a visionary filmmaking mindset that leaves a mark on itself.
Works Cited
Late Spring. Yasujiro, Ozu. 1949.
Bordwell, David. Thompson, Kristin. Art Cinema and The Idea of Authorship. Film History: An Introduction. Second Edition. McGraw Hill. 2003
Dorsky, Nathaniel. Devotional Cinema. Small Press Distribution. 2003.
Japanese Aesthetics. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Dec 2005. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/japanese-aesthetics/#MonoNoAwarPathThin