Metrograph

Widowed father Shukichi (Chishû Ryû) and his dotingly devoted 27-year-old daughter Noriko (Setsuko Hara) have through the years settled into a comfortable routine of domestic harmony—that is, until Noriko’s aunt (Haruko Sugimura) convinces Shukichi that Noriko is at grave risk of becoming an old maid, and must be married off in all haste and by whatever means necessary. The film in which motifs and scenarios that will recur through the last act of Ozu’s career are laid out with delicacy and precision, and a work in which turbulent emotion is ever present beneath the placid surface of each deceptively serene scene.

Distributor: Janus Films