By Eliot Hay, Special to The Chronicle

Yasujiro Ozu’s “Late Spring”revolves around the daughter of a professor, Noriko, who resides with her father and resolves to be his caretaker, as well. Noriko, who has reached the age of thirty-two, is hounded by her matchmaker aunt to be wed immediately, since she is gradually passing her expiration date and is in peril of becoming a spinster. Noriko’s father, Skukichi, an aging and taciturn professor, decides to appease the aunt and concurs with her decision to press Noriko into a nuptial agreement with a potential husband that the aunt has selected personally. All that remains is Noriko’s decision, whether she is to remain with her father or continue her life with another man.

Chastity and asceticism have invariably been in tandem with Ozu’s films, though they seem to be strange epithets to employ. Rather, Ozu clung to a dignity that was inherently Japanese in his films, a dignity that was severely wounded by the Second World War but was struggling to remain intact. Indeed, his protagonists are affable individuals and blithe in spirit, but the sense of fatigue and the wounds of morality permeate them, breeding an immensely textured characterization. Noriko is a blithe spirit who is content in remaining with her father, feeling no aspiration to be wed or to leave Skukichi. Her aunt insists on the contrary, however, which segues into another of Ozu’s: westernization. The anxieties of the postwar generation’s belief that Japanese culture would be corroded by the influence of the west are evinced by the aunt’s persistency, which can be inferred as a desperate attempt to restore the customs of a prewar Japan. Interestingly enough, the aunt depicts the potential husband as a “Gary Cooper look-a-like,” an assertion undoubtedly employed as evidence of the west’s influence in commerce and culture, especially film. “Late Spring” can essentially be viewed as a dialectic between generations and culture, though Ozu is far too tactful a craftsman to permit such notions leaden his film.

Those who are acquainted with Ozu are acquainted with his style as well as morals, with “Late Spring” being his nascent stage of stylistic mise-en-scene. Ozu’s fondness for circumventing the conventional 180 degree camera position is extant here, preferring the tatami mat shots to a strictly horizontal line of sight. If a dialogue occurs, Ozu situates the camera between the interlocutors, both of whom break the fourth wall in the process. While it may be too convenient to aver, Ozu’s camera is certainly not a protagonist or a participant, but a moral impetus that simultaneously remains stationary. Films are no more catered to the viewer as religion is to the parishioner; indeed, films are the invitation to sit with the director and his movie. The ensuing film may be distasteful, revolting, sublime or revelatory, and as a guest you are obliged to either remain or leave throughout its course. But you remain the guest throughout, and whether or not you find reverence in the film should not be the filmmaker’s concern. In this regard, Ozu’s film is an invitation, and the camera notifies us of that through its inert observation, its sympathetic and tender revelations, and its lingering ruminations.

In retrospect, “Late Spring” has more resonance with the father than with the daughter, though the two seem to embody a humanistic ambit with one another. Time is precious to him, and “Late Spring”exists as a threshold of alteration, which is all the more palpable to the elder father. Mono no aware (the belief in the inherent transience of things) permeates “Late Spring” (as it would for the remainder of Ozu’s career), and the simultaneous dignity and melancholy of such a concept unifies these characters. Time’s immutability is juxtaposed in scenes of stationary bicycles, rustling tree limbs, vacant homes, and serene waves, which is as much an example of the indicative aesthetic of the silent era (which Ozu was a member of) as it is the existence of time. Ozu’s humanism and dignified pace will undoubtedly stultify those who are accustomed to the ersatz conventionalism and trite moral leanings that commercial film studios are exponents of, but persevere nonetheless, and Ozu will seem as authentic and poetic as any in cinema. “Late Spring”can attest to this.