In his first color film, Ozu beautifully captures the changing cultural landscape of postwar Japan as it moves toward modernity. Like Equinox Flower's protagonist, Ozu had resisted change -- for years he had refused to shoot in color. This time, the studio insisted, and once he began shooting, Ozu was so delighted with the results that he never again made a black and white film.
"Higanbana," the film's Japanese title, is the name of a plant known as "equinox flower" because it blooms around the time of the autumn equinox. The plant, which has red, spider-like flower clusters, is also called "red spider lily" in English. The latter is appropriate for the film, since Ozu takes full advantage of the color photography and features splashes of color throughout, most prominently a vivid red, including a casually placed teakettle in the family home. The addition of color to the director's stylistic trademarks, such as his so-called "tatami" shot, a low-angle stationary shot, and his "pillow" shots, exterior shots of buildings or streets which cushion the transition from scene to scene without the use of dissolves, gives them added interest, such as the red and yellow banners in a restaurant, and colored paper lanterns on the street.
While displaying Ozu's unique visual style, heighted by the addition of color, the emotional tone of Equinox Flower is looser and more playful than in his often-melancholic earlier films. The women in Hirayama's life, his wife and two daughters, tease him and don't allow him to get away with his intransigence. Instead of deferring to his dictates, they challenge him on his "do as I say, not as I do" attitude. His wife, played by the wonderful Kinuyo Tanaka (an Ozu favorite since the silent film era), points out his inconsistency, and gently but firmly insists on one final capitulation.
In a review of the film, New York Times critic Vincent Canby called it "uncharacteristically buoyant," and "one of Ozu's least dark comedies, which is not to say that it's carefree, but, rather, that it's gentle and amused in the way that it acknowledges time's passage, the changing of values and the adjustments that must be made between generations." A charming and wistful color snapshot of the traditionalist Hirayama's acceptance of modern ways, Equinox Flower is also an announcement that Ozu too could continue to be relevant in a new era of Japanese film.
Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Producer: Shizuo Yamanouchi
Screenplay: Yasujiro Ozu, Kogo Noda, original story by Ton Satomi
Cinematography: Yuharu Atsuta
Editor: Yoshiyazu Hamamura
Costume Design: Yuji Nagashima
Art Direction: Tatsuo Hamada
Music: Takanobu Sato
Principal Cast: Shin Saburi (Wataru Hirayama), Kinuyo Tanaka (Kiyoko Hirayama), Ineko Arima (Setsuko Hirayama), Yoshiko Kuga (Fumiko Mikami), Chishu Ryu (Shukichi Mikami), Keiji Sada (Masahiko Taniguchi), Fujiko Yamamoto ((Yukiko Sasaki), Chieko Naniwa (Hatsu Sasaki), Teiji Takahashi (Shotaru Kondo), Miyuki Kuwano (Hisako Hirayama),
118 minutes
by Margarita Landazuri
