Early spring
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Early spring |
| Original title | 早春 |
| Country of production | Japan |
| original language | Japanese |
| Publishing year | 1956 |
| length | 144 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Yasujirō Ozu |
| script |
Kōgo Noda Yasujirō Ozu |
| music | Kojun Saitō , as well as elements from La traviata by Giuseppe Verdi |
| camera | Yūharu Atsuta |
| cut | Yoshiyasu Hamamura |
| occupation | |
| |
Early Spring ( Japanese 早春 , Sōshun ) is a Japanese feature film directed by Ozu Yasujirō from 1956.
action
Shoji Sugiyama is a simple commercial clerk. He and his colleagues take the train to work in Tokyo every day . Shoji is married to Masako. However, their son's early death weighs on their marriage. He would be in first grade now. Since then, Shoji has concentrated on his work and his colleagues. He neglects his wife. After work, he meets up with his colleagues to play games and comes home late. His colleagues also know that he is having an affair with colleague Chiyo. But his wife Masako also knows about it, but is silent. Only when Shoji forgets the anniversary of her son's death does she leave him. Shoji is aware of his guilt and wants to change his life. He can be transferred from Tokyo to Mitsuishi. In the seclusion of the small industrial town in the mountains of Okayama , he believes he can start a new life. After a while, Masako also returns to him.
reception
With Early Spring , Yasujirō Ozu said he wanted to portray the pathos of office workers' lives. The lexicon of international film certifies that he succeeded in this, the film is a “haunting description of the milieu and situation of the life of the lower social classes in a mass society” . Early spring describes his story "precisely, with attention to detail and without any gimmicky" .
On the occasion of the first showing of Early Spring in the United States, Nora Sayre of the New York Times praised the film as a great work that should be considered a classic as early as 1974. The acting performances were impeccable for Sayre. Ozu found dramatic depths in the quiet, simple life of his protagonists, which he skillfully uncovered through small details in the plot.
For the Ozu biographer David Bordwell , Early Spring stands for an attempt to modernize the Shomin-geki genre. With a more melodramatic plot and a stronger emphasis on sexual conflicts, Early Spring is a consciously youth-oriented film, even if Ozu has reintroduced themes, narrative structures and narrative strategies that are characteristic of it.
literature
- David Bordwell : Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema . Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ 1988, ISBN 0-85170-158-2 , pp. 334-339.
Web links
- Early spring in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Yasujirō Ozu: Ozu on Ozu: The Talkies . In: Cinema , Vol. 6, No. 1, 1970, p. 4.
- ↑ Early spring. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed April 19, 2017 .
- ↑ Nora Sayre: 'Early Spring', From Japan: Ozu's Modest Classic Seems Utterly Fresh . The New York Times , September 26, 1974 (accessed November 29, 2009).
- ^ David Bordwell: Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema , p. 334.