Details

Release year: 1959

Storyline

The head of a Japanese theatre troupe returns to a small coastal town where he left a son who thinks he is his uncle, and tries to make up for the lost time, but his current mistress grows jealous.

Top credits

Directors

Yasujirō Ozu

Writers

Cast

Ganjirô Nakamura — Komajurô Arashi
Machiko Kyô — Sumiko
Haruko Sugimura — Oyoshi
Ayako Wakao — Kayo

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Did you know

• Stated by cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa about director Yasujirō Ozu: "I'll never forget that, from the first day on, he knew the names of everybody on the set, fifty people in the crew, people he'd never worked with. He'd written their names down, I learned later. But everyone was impressed and became devoted to him. Every single day working on this film was extremely pleasurable and enriching. In each of Ozu's films you can sniff his personality. He was pure, gentle, light-hearted, a fine individual."

• Roger Ebert, who provided the audio commentary on the 2003 Criterion DVD release, names this film as one of his ten all-time favorites.

• Some subtitles have Kichinosuke, portrayed by Kōji Mitsui, jokingly calling himself Toshirô Mifune, despite giving his real name in the actual dialogue. Mitsui collaborated with Mifune on six Akira Kurosawa films: Scandal (1950), The Lower Depths (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958), The Bad Sleep Well (1960), High and Low (1963), and Red Beard (1965).