Banshun (1949)'s activity

Ozu's first collaboration with the always-touching Setsuko Hara, Late Spring (1949) is also a story he'll come back to again and again with variations - a father feels he must marry off his daughter even though she's quite content living at home and taking care of him. This is an early film in Ozu's post-war output, and the war feels more present than it does in later iterations of this tale, and is more than demarcation between traditional and modern Japan. The War is more overtly referenced and characters - spouses, illegible men - are conspicuous by their absence. If Noriko is unmarried in "late spring" (at 27 years old), it's because so many young men were killed in the conflict. If she doesn't want to marry though, it's still because of the clash between tradition and modernity as exemplified by her divorced friend who lives by herself in an Americanized house. When father and daughter go to see a Nô play and contemplates leaving her father for matrimony, we feel the crushing weight of tradition on her. Ozu intercuts his domestic tableaux with nature, tradition and modernity in still life, and that scene is followed by a large ancient tree, another metaphor for tradition and in this case, family. Nariko is a pleasant-spirited lady, full of smiles and extremely content in her lifestyle. Her father (Ozu steady Chishū Ryū) loves her and sacrifices his own happiness and comfort for what he believes is her path to happiness. In doing good, they do each other harm, though you're free to believe otherwise, as we're never shown the groom, nor even the vaguest sight of her fate.