Directed by Yasujiro Ozu
39 Episodes
Yasujiro Ozu was Japanese cinema’s great poet of everyday life, and, 120 years after his birth, he remains one of the most significant film artists who ever lived. From the late 1920s to the early ’60s, Ozu explored the rhythms and tensions of a country trying to reconcile modern and traditional values, especially as played out in relations between the generations. Though he is best known for his 1953 masterpiece TOKYO STORY, Ozu began his career in the silent era in a looser mode, with comedies like I WAS BORN, BUT . . . and gangster movies like DRAGNET GIRL. He then gradually mastered the domestic drama during the war years and afterward, employing both humor, as in GOOD MORNING, and distilled drama, as in LATE SPRING, before the final blossoming of his art in such late color triumphs as AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON. With its instantly recognizable hallmarks—static shots, often from the vantage point of someone sitting low on a tatami mat; patient pacing; moments of transcendence represented by the isolated beauty of everyday objects—Ozu’s rigorous style has influenced filmmakers as various as Wim Wenders, Jim Jarmusch, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Claire Denis, and Paul Schrader.
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2:05:08Episode 1Early Summer
Episode 1
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1951 • Japan
Starring Setsuko Hara, Chishu Ryu, Chikage AwashimaThe Mamiya family is seeking a husband for their daughter, Noriko, but she has ideas of her own. Played by the extraordinary Setsuko Hara, Noriko impulsively chooses her childhood friend, at once fulfilli...
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1:56:18Episode 2The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice
Episode 2
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1952 • Japan
Starring Shin Saburi, Michiyo Kogure, Keiko TsushimaOne of the ineffably lovely domestic sagas made by Yasujiro Ozu at the height of his mastery, THE FLAVOR OF GREEN TEA OVER RICE is a sublimely piercing portrait of a marriage coming quietly undone. Secre...
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2:17:06Episode 3Tokyo Story
Episode 3
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1953 • Japan
Starring Chishu Ryu, Chieko Higashiyama, Setsuko HaraA profoundly stirring evocation of elemental humanity and universal heartbreak, TOKYO STORY is the crowning achievement of the unparalleled Yasujiro Ozu. The film, which follows an aging couple’s journe...
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2:25:20Episode 4Early Spring
Episode 4
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1956 • Japan
In his first film after the commercial and critical success of Tokyo Story, Ozu examines life in postwar Japan through the eyes of a young salaryman, dissatisfied with career and marriage, who begins an affair with a flirtatious co-worker.
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2:21:02Episode 5Tokyo Twilight
Episode 5
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1957 • Japan
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.
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1:58:05Episode 6Equinox Flower
Episode 6
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1958 • Japan
Later in his career, Ozu started becoming increasingly sympathetic with the younger generation, a shift that was cemented in Equinox Flower, his gorgeously detailed first color film, about an old-fashioned father and his newfangled daughter.
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1:59:39Episode 7Floating Weeds
Episode 7
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1959 • Japan
Starring Ganjiro Nakamura, Machiko Kyo, Ayako WakaoIn 1959, Yasujiro Ozu remade his 1934 silent classic A STORY OF FLOATING WEEDS in color with the celebrated cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa (RASHOMON, UGETSU). Setting his later version in a seaside locati...
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1:34:38Episode 8Good Morning
Episode 8
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1959 • Japan
Starring Masahiko Shimazu, Koji Shidara, Kuniko MiyakeA lighthearted take on director Yasujiro Ozu’s perennial theme of the challenges of intergenerational relationships, GOOD MORNING tells the story of two young boys who stop speaking in protest after t...
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2:08:50Episode 9Late Autumn
Episode 9
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1960 • Japan
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.
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1:43:07Episode 10The End of Summer
Episode 10
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1961 • Japan
The Kohayakawa family is thrown into distress when childlike father Manbei takes up with his old mistress, in one of Ozu's most deftly modulated blendings of comedy and tragedy.
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1:53:39Episode 11An Autumn Afternoon
Episode 11
Directed by Yasujiro Ozu • 1962 • Japan
Starring Chishu Ryu, Shima Iwashita, Keiji SadaThe last film by Yasujiro Ozu was also his final masterpiece, a gently heartbreaking story about a man’s dignifed resignation to life’s shifting currents and society’s modernization. Though the widower Shuhei...
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Tokyo-ga
Episode 12
Directed by Wim Wenders • 1985 • United States, Germany
On the streets of Tokyo and in meetings with some of Yasujiro Ozu's legendary collaborators, renowned director Wim Wenders explores the world of Ozu, whom Wenders considers 'a sacred treasure of cinema.'
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40:30Episode 13Talking with Ozu
Episode 13
Created by Shochiku studios to commemorate the ninetieth anniversary of director Yasujiro Ozu’s birth, this 1993 documentary features filmmakers Stanley Kwan, Aki Kaurismäki, Claire Denis, Lindsay Anderson, Paul Schrader, Wim Wenders, and Hou Hsiao-hsien reflecting on the importance of Ozu and hi...
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2:02:57Episode 14I Lived, But . . .
Episode 14
Directed by Kazuo Inoue, the 1983 documentary I LIVED, BUT . . . features interviews with actors Chishu Ryu, Mariko Okada, and Haruko Sugimura; filmmaker Shohei Imamura, director Yasujiro Ozu’s former assistant; critics Donald Richie and Tadao Sato; and many others on whom Ozu had a profound impact.
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47:51Episode 15Ozu’s Films from Behind the Scenes
Episode 15
This conversation about Yasujiro Ozu and his working methods, produced by the Shochiku film company on the centenary of Ozu’s birth, features a few of his collaborators—child actor and sound and editing assistant Kojiro Suematsu, assistant cameraman Takashi Kawamata, and producer Shizuo Yamanouchi.
