The End of Summer

Ozu's penultimate movie, The End Of Summer, was part of his color films made during the late 50s and early 60s...The End Of Summer contrasts the negative sides of both traditional and modern Japanese life during that period. Read full review

The diversity of the human elements - the wonderful accumulation of interlinked characters and situations in Nakamura's family, daughters, ex-mistresses, business associates, sisters, brothers - builds impassively to a harrowing, unusually bleak climax in which death claims its due and the consolation offered is disturbingly minimal, tenderly as we feel for those bereaved. [20 Mar 2004]

Ozu's pared-down visual style facilitates our involvement with these 'ordinary' characters, who are struggling to reconcile their feelings of duty and desire, and to accept life's inevitable changes. Read full review

Written with great insight by Kogo Noda and filmed with painterly delicacy by Asakazu Nakai, though Ozu's touch brings the magic to this domestic drama. Read full review

Another gem (given his consistency in style and subject, how could it not be? ); the atypically emphatic music alone disappoints. [06 Aug 2003, p.74]