Yasujiro Ozu-Kohayagawa-ke no aki ('The End of Summer') (1961)

The End of Summer: Ozu's second-to-last film beautifully blends comedy and tragedy to tell the story of three sisters who are stunned to discover that their aging father has taken up with his former mistress. The Kohayakawa family is thrown into distress when childlike father Manbei takes up with his old mistress, in one of Ozu’s most deftly modulated blendings of comedy and tragedy. Criterion




Ozu’s penultimate film returns to the genre closest to his heart - the intimate portrayal of Japanese family life, exploring the breakdown of traditional family values in the face of postwar progress. It owes a great deal to many of his earlier shomin-geki - family films like 'Tokyo Story'. The Kohayakawa family sets about running its sake business, arranging to marry off its youngest daughter Noriko, and exploring the possibility of helping their widowed daughter-in-law Akiko to remarry. ArtificialEye




Meanwhile the head of the family, Manbei, sneaks out daily, to visit a former mistress. Manbei’s behaviour upsets his daughter Fumiko, who furiously rebukes him. When Manbei has a sudden heart attack, recriminations are set aside as the family rally round the ailing patriarch. However, Manbei soon resumes his philandering ways. The passing of the old order and a resigned acceptance of the inevitability of change finds perfect expression in Ozu’s pared down visual style, revealing his characters in both a compassionate and humourous light. ArtificialEye




This is a very different film from Tokyo Story. More playful, slightly less melodramatic yet just as peotic as the accepted masterpiece by Ozu. Set in Kyoto, Ganjiro Nakamura, a well known kabuki actor seen also in Floating Weeds, plays Manbei, the father of a family. Just as in many of Ozu's films, his main concern is the arrangement of his daughter's marriage. However, she is torn between appeasing her father and pursuing another man. Meanwhile, Setsuko Hara, his widowed daughter-in-law, is also encouraged to remarry a respectable gentleman but she finds that she has nothing in common with him. Through this simple premise, Ozu explores the conflict between the pressure of conformity and desire for modernisation in Japanese society. The humour of the film comes from Manbei's secret excursions to his lover's house. Nakamura's acting in these little episodes are a gem. (amazon.com)




After his second experience with colour, a light, happy "Ohayo", secretly epic and impressed, Ozu shot one of the milestones of his career: "Kohayagawa-ke no aki" is in my recollection, with "Banshun" and "Munakata shimai", his best work. Most of the themes exposed in previous films (father's intervention in his daughters' lifes, love (in the hands of others), solitude) are here integrated in a comedy-structured film that becomes a drama. It's perhaps his unique melodrama and it is shown with the desperate of the last breath for some characters, as usual in Ozu, doubtful and seeking a place for their quiet happiness. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0055052/usercomments)