At 2.5 hours, this is Ozu's longest film, and a lot of people seem to think it's unnecessarily long. Personally, I disagree; all the threads that might seem to be unnecessary padding (the war buddies, the digressions into discussions about working life, etc) are the series of little commitments that seem to compel one's attention while the important stuff of life slips by unnoticed. The way the film demonstrates this is masterful, and that, much more than the plot per se, is the point for me.

Once again Ozu slowly builds to a complex and emotionally satisfying conclusion, using a simple style that highlights relationships in families, the workplace, among friends, and between objects out in the world. The two leads are a bit more opaque than we find in many Ozu films, but that works amid their quietly contentious relationship. The final few scenes play out remarkably well. What a beautiful film.

The last 20 minutes or so are really good, up there with Ozu's best work. But there's a lot of plodding, pointless scenes before you get there. Ozu's delicate touch and aversion to melodrama works to the degree that it punctuates the emotional moments when they do come, but here he puts too much downtime in between them (the running time is nearly 2 1/2 hours). Although the movie says a lot about contemporary disillusionment in Tokyo, I'm not sure if it's worth the effort.

This was a new step in the career of Ozu, being pressured to put more youth in his features, he adapted to it with barely a misstep using a focus on both a troubled marriage & the business man in post-war Japan. The pacing can seem a little slow at times but the script and all the magnificent technical aspects of Ozu always leaves me spell-binded in its 140 runtime. This was my first viewing of Ozu and its always stuck with me as one of his finest works.

Excellent, but perhaps overlong Ozu film about a married office worker's affair with a typist. The two women actresses who take the roles of the betrayed wife and the typist are particularly fine.