Late Spring /

Late Spring (晩春, Banshun) is a 1949 black-and-white Japanese film drama directed by Yasujirō Ozu. Many consider this extremely chaste film between a father and his marriageable daughter his finest achievement. It is based on Father and Daughter by Kazuo Hirotsu. The story concerns Noriko, who lives happily with her widowed father and seems in no hurry to get married. Her father, a professor, however, wants to see her settled and conspires with his sister to persuade Noriko to pursue an arranged marriage. The film stars Setsuko Hara, in her first of six collaborations with Ozu. Professor Shukichi Somiya (Chishu Ryu) has only one child, a twenty-seven-year-old unmarried daughter, Noriko (Setsuko Hara), who takes care of his everyday needs. However, a meeting with his sister Masa (Haruko Sugimura) convinces him that she is now of marriageable age. Noriko is close to his assistant, Hattori (Jun Usami), and Masa asks Somiya to question Noriko if Hattori is interested in her. However it turns out that Hattori already has a fiancée he is about to marry. Somiya's brother who lives in Kyoto, pays a visit to the Somiyas. Noriko learns that her uncle Onodera, a widower, has remarried, and she