is a 1956 film by
Yasujirō Ozu
was a Japanese filmmaker. He began his career during the era of silent films, and his last films were made in colour in the early 1960s. Ozu first made a number of short comedies, before turning to more serious themes in the 1930s.
The most pr ...
about a married
salaryman
The term is a Japanese word for salary, salaried workers. In Japanese popular culture, it is portrayed as a white-collar worker who shows unwavering loyalty and commitment to his employer, prioritizing work over anything else, including family. ...
(
Ryō Ikebe) who escapes the monotony of married life and his work at a fire brick manufacturing company by beginning an affair with a fellow office worker (
Keiko Kishi
is a Japanese actress, writer, and UNFPA Goodwill Ambassador.
Life and career
She made her acting debut in 1951 in Noboru Nakamura's film '' Home Sweet Home''.
In the 1950s, David Lean proposed her for the main role in '' The Wind Cannot Read ...
). The film also deals with the hardships of the salaryman lifestyle.
"I wanted," Ozu said, "to portray what you might call the pathos of the white-collar life."
With a runtime of 144 minutes, ''Early Spring'' is Ozu's longest surviving film, and his penultimate shot in black and white.
Plot
Office worker Shoji Sugiyama (
Ryō Ikebe) wakes and goes about his morning routine, attended by his wife, Masako (
Chikage Awashima
was a Japanese film and stage actress.
Life
A graduate from Takarazuka Music and Dance School and member of the Takarazuka Revue, Chikage Awashima entered the Shochiku film studios and made her film debut in 1950. She appeared in films of numero ...
), before commuting to his job in the Tokyo office of a fire brick manufacturing company.
During a hiking trip with office friends, Shoji spends time alone with a fellow worker, a typist nicknamed "Goldfish" for her large eyes (
Keiko Kishi
is a Japanese actress, writer, and UNFPA Goodwill Ambassador.
Life and career
She made her acting debut in 1951 in Noboru Nakamura's film '' Home Sweet Home''.
In the 1950s, David Lean proposed her for the main role in '' The Wind Cannot Read ...
). After the trip Goldfish makes advances to Shoji and the two begin an affair. Masako suspects something is amiss but is reluctant to confront her husband. After Shoji fails to mark the anniversary of their son's death, he and Masako become progressively estranged.
Their friends, too, suspect something is transpiring between Shoji and Goldfish. They confront Goldfish, advising her not to come between a married couple. Aggrieved, Goldfish visits Shoji late in the night. Masako, convinced that her suspicions have foundation, demands that Shoji tell her the truth about his relationship with Goldfish. Shoji still lies about it, and the next morning Masako leaves the marital home to stay with her mother.
Shoji relocates to his company's office in the provincial town of Mitsuishi (now part of
Bizen). Masako eventually travels to Mitsuishi and the couple is reunited. They promise to forget their past troubles and strive for marital happiness.
Cast
*
Chikage Awashima
was a Japanese film and stage actress.
Life
A graduate from Takarazuka Music and Dance School and member of the Takarazuka Revue, Chikage Awashima entered the Shochiku film studios and made her film debut in 1950. She appeared in films of numero ...
as Masako Sugiyama
*
Ryō Ikebe as Shoji Sugiyama
*
Keiko Kishi
is a Japanese actress, writer, and UNFPA Goodwill Ambassador.
Life and career
She made her acting debut in 1951 in Noboru Nakamura's film '' Home Sweet Home''.
In the 1950s, David Lean proposed her for the main role in '' The Wind Cannot Read ...
as Chiyo Kaneko (Goldfish)
*
Teiji Takahashi as Taizo Aoki
*
Chishū Ryū
was a Japanese actor who, in a career lasting 65 years, appeared in over 160 films and about 70 television productions.
Early life
Ryū was born in Tamamizu Village, Tamana, Kumamoto, Tamana County, a rural area of Kumamoto Prefecture in Kyushu ...
as Kiichi Onodera
*
So Yamamura
, sometimes credited as Satoshi Yamamura, was a Japanese actor and film director.
Biography
Yamamura was born Koga Hirosada in Tenri, Nara Prefecture, and graduated from the University of Tokyo. In 1942, Yamamura and Isao Yamagata formed the B ...
as Yutaka Kawai
*
Haruko Sugimura as Tamako
*
Takako Fujino as Terumi Aoki
*
Masami Taura as Koichi Kitagawa
*
Kumeko Urabe as Shige Kitagawa
*
Kuniko Miyake
was a Japanese actress. She appeared in nearly 200 films between 1934 and 1991.
Biography
Miyake was born Yasu Miura in Iwatsku City, Saitama Prefecture. After graduating from Saitama Prefectural Kuki High School, she joined the Shochiku film ...
as Yukiko Kawai
*
Daisuke Katō
was a Japanese actor. He appeared in over 200 films, including Akira Kurosawa's ''Seven Samurai'', ''Rashomon'', ''Yojimbo'', and ''Ikiru''. He also worked repeatedly for noted directors such as Yasujirō Ozu, Mikio Naruse and Kenji Mizoguchi.
...
as Sakamoto
*
Kōji Mitsui
was a Japanese actor. He appeared in more than 150 films from 1925 to 1975, including 29 of ''Kinema Junpo''’s annual Top-10 winners and three of its 10 best Japanese films of all time. In 2000 the magazine named him one of the 60 most impor ...
as Hirayama
*
Eijirô Tôno as Tokichi Hattori
*
Fujio Suga as Tanabe
*
Haruo Tanaka
was a Japanese film actor noted for his supporting roles in a career that spanned seven decades.
Career
Tanaka was born in Kyoto and quit school in order to become a film actor, joining the Nikkatsu studio in 1925. He eventually moved up to se ...
as Nomura
*
Chieko Nakakita as Sakae Tominaga
*
Nobuo Nakamura as Arakawa
*
Seiji Miyaguchi as Tamako's Husband
*
Tsûsai Sugawara as Shige's Customer
Production
After the release of ''
Tokyo Story
is a 1953 Japanese drama film directed by Yasujirō Ozu and starring Chishū Ryū and Chieko Higashiyama, about an aging couple who travel to Tokyo to visit their grown children.
Upon release, it did not immediately gain international reco ...
'', Ozu was called upon to assist his friend, the actress
Kinuyo Tanaka
was a Japanese actress and film director. She had a career lasting over 50 years with more than 250 acting credits, but was best known for her 15 films with director Kenji Mizoguchi, such as ''The Life of Oharu'' (1952) and ''Ugetsu'' (1953). W ...
, in completing her second film as director, ''
The Moon Has Risen''. By the time production on ''Early Spring'' began, Ozu had been away from the director's chair for three years: a substantial hiatus for someone who had averaged a picture a year since the end of the Second World War. In the meantime, the ''"Ofuna-cho"'' or "home drama", the genre of film with which Ozu was most closely associated, had decreased in popularity. Ozu maintained that "the traditions of the ''Ofuna-cho'' are the result of 30 years. They are not going to fall in one morning". Nevertheless, under pressure from his studio, Ozu made several concessions to modernity. He cast mostly young and popular actors, and, with long-time collaborator
Kōgo Noda, delivered a script devoid of the dominant parental figures that were a fixture of his previous films. The theme of communication problems between generations, another familiar trope of Ozu's work, was also absent. In its place was the theme of disillusionment with life as a salaryman. "I wanted to have a go at representing their lifestyle," said Ozu. "The thrill and aspirations one feels as a fresh graduate entering society gradually wane as the days go by. Even working diligently for thirty years doesn't amount to much."
''Early Spring'' makes use of temporal ellipses, gaps in the narrative into which the audience is invited to project meaning, which are common in Ozu's films. For example, after Shoji and Goldfish begin their fling we do not see them alone together until Goldfish visits Shoji's home. Since this is after the pair's friends have confronted Goldfish, we, like the friends, do not know for certain if the affair is ongoing. Ozu also omits potentially melodramatic moments: Masako does not discover her husband's lipstick-stained handkerchief on screen, but instead recounts the discovery to her mother.
Reception
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
reports 100% approval for ''Early Spring'', with an average rating of 8/10. In a highly positive review, Nora Sayre of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' wrote that the work "conveys the claustrophobia of office life better than any other film I've seen", and that "Ozu finds dramatic depths in quiet, ordinary lives. And during the time that you spend with these people—the span of the movie—you really feel that you've come to know them well, to understand why their relationships do or don't develop." Sayre wrote that the characters' "emotions or hidden instincts are brilliantly revealed through small details".
In ''
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. It was founded on February 21, 1925, by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a reporter for ''The New York T ...
'', Richard Brody argued that "Ozu’s despairing view of postwar Japan looks as harshly at blind modernization as it does at decadent tradition." Don Druker of the ''
Chicago Reader
The ''Chicago Reader'', or ''Reader'' (stylized as ЯEADER), is an American alternative newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. The ''Reader'' has been ...
'' called the film a "casual yet meticulously detailed reconstruction of Japan's routinized
white-collar milieu". Despite the praise, it is not one of Ozu's most renowned works.
Leonard Maltin
Leonard Michael Maltin (born December 18, 1950) is an American film critic, film historian, and author. He is known for his book of film capsule reviews, '' Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide'', published from 1969 to 2014. Maltin was the film criti ...
gave it three of four stars: "Incisive exploration of isolation and alienation in post-WW2 Japan;... "
Home media
In 2007,
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home video, home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films". A "sister company" of art film, arth ...
released the film as part of the DVD box set ''Eclipse Series 3: Late Ozu''.
In 2012, the BFI released the film on Region 2 DVD, along with ''
Tokyo Twilight'' and ''
Woman of Tokyo'', as ''Three Melodramas''.
References
External links
*
''Early Spring'' at AllMovie*
*
{{Authority control
1956 films
1956 drama films
Japanese drama films
Japanese black-and-white films
Films directed by Yasujirō Ozu
Films with screenplays by Yasujirō Ozu
Films with screenplays by Kogo Noda
Shochiku films
Films about adultery
Films about death
Films set in Tokyo
1950s Japanese films