Painful Accuracy

By JAY COCKS

AN AUTUMN by AFTERNOON Directed by YASUJIRO OZU Screenplay by KOGO NODA and YASUJIRO OZU

As he worked on his 53rd and last film in 1963, Yasujiro Ozu may or may not have known that he was near death from cancer. But An Autumn Afternoon has a feeling of firm, final wisdom and of almost transcendent serenity. It is a quiet film, but not a delicate one. The force of An Autumn Afternoon is inescapable, the strength of insights accumulated and stored over a lifetime, fully justifying Ozu's reputation as the most Japanese of all Japanese directors.

Most of Ozu's work has never been shown in America; one of his finest films, Tokyo Story, made in 1953, achieved only a modest and limited release last year. Yet his style, even at first glance, is arrestingly original. The camera seldom moves; the angle of view is virtually constant. Ozu fixes his camera at slightly above floor level, almost in a reflective posture, observing everything as if from tatami (floor mats). "It is the attitude for watching, for listening," Film Historian Donald Richie has written, "the attitude of the haiku master who sits in silence and with an almost painful accuracy observes cause and effect, reaching essence through an extreme simplification."

In An Autumn Afternoon, Ozu cuts in for closeups, but does not employ any of the traditional optical devices to bridge scenes. That would be a little like throwing a pebble to change the reflection in a still lake. Instead, he inserts images--a staircase in shadow, an empty hallway, a narrow, brightly lit street --that not only summarize the tone of the scene just finished but establish the feeling of the one to come. Like stanzas in a poem, the scenes stand apart, enriched by what surrounds them.

The honor and obligation, pride and loyalty of family life--dominant and recurring themes in Ozu's work--are once again at the core of An Autumn Afternoon. Chishu Ryu, who played the old man in Tokyo Story, is present this time as a businessman and widower. He spends most of his days away from the office with his cronies, one of whom exults in the invigorating company of a new young wife, another of whom warns of the inevitable encroachments of age. The businessman flirts with the past, memories of his wife and World War II--and with a sympathetic young barmaid. Mostly, though, he is concerned about marrying off his daughter, who at 24 is an increasingly less likely prospect for marriage. Finally, he makes a match for her and she departs from home, leaving him to face the long autumn night of mortality.

Resonance and observation are what really matter here, not plot. Ozu excels at capturing the currents of tenderness and the differences caused by age and experience that flow, sometimes simultaneously, between parent and child. Watching the old man, slightly bleary with whisky, leer at the barmaid, his son says: "She doesn't look at all like mother." The old man smiles, a little sly, a little wry.

In a long, poignant sequence, the old man and his businessmen friends hon or their old teacher, nicknamed "the Gourd," who responds to their tribute by gratefully consuming large quantities of liquor. The men are touched by his almost desperate drunkenness, even as they feel threatened by his low es tate (he has been reduced to running a small noodle shop) and advancing years, so they take up a collection for him.

The gift is delivered, politely declined, but left behind anyway. The teacher tries not to look at the envelope containing the money, and suddenly lowers his face into his slightly trem bling hands. In this one motion, Ozu transforms a figure of faintly pathetic fun into a truly tragic individual. It is one measure of the richness of this al together remarkable film that Ozu is able to show such scenes without the slightest sentimentality, and with a hu mane and unique dignity.

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