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Cinema Ozu (13): The Lost Season (Spring Comes from the Ladies)

23: Spring Comes from the Ladies / Haru wa gofujin kara (1932)
Status: apparently lost
Script: fully preserved
Prints: none currently known
Region1 DVD: N/A

Based on Bordwell's synopsis, this one was a mishmash of elements Ozu had used in previous films, and wasn't much more than an easily-digestible, goofball studio comedy. Bordwell had the references dead-on, so I'm paraphrasing his citations. A tailor is owed money (Dreams of Youth) by irresponsible college kids who are cramming for exams that they worry about failing (Days of Youth and I Flunked, But...). The search for employment in an era of high unemployment is terribly depressing for the young men at the story's center (I Graduated, But..., The Lady and the Beard, & Tokyo Chorus).

Tatsuo Saito plays Kato, a college student who owes Sakaguchi the tailor (Takeshi Sakamoto) money. He promises to pay, but only if the tailor takes Kato's exams for him. The tailor then proceeds to flunk the exams. Kato consoles the tailor, who will now go unpaid by his flunked debtor. In a moment of rare, blatant self-reference for Ozu, Kato tells the tailor that it'll work out, "haven't you seen I Flunked, But...?" Kato falls into a depression, but his spirits are lifted when he realizes that he can spend another year hanging out with his girlfriend Masako (Hiroki Izumi, who only made four movies, and only this one with Ozu) at the campus coffee shop.

Kato's buddy Yoshida (Jiro Shirota) owes the same tailor money. On top of that, he meets the tailor's sister Miyoko (Setsuko Inoue, from the troubled Beauty's Sorrows) and falls for her. Sakaguchi the tailor tries to seize on the good fortune that Yoshida actually graduated by helping him get a job (so that he'll then pay his outstanding debt). Yoshida confounds him by weaseling out of paying once again. Yoshida's boss makes arrangements for the graduate's marriage to the tailor's sister, and Sakaguchi apparently loses it. He starts meandering around, handing bills to random students, and saying "Spring comes from the ladies, but debts must be postponed", which I take to be some sort of colloquial expression.

Takeshi Sakamoto, who plays Sakaguchi the tailor here, had worked with the director off and on since Ozu's second film, The Dreams of Youth. He began taking on more substantive roles during this period. In fact, he would soon play Kihachi, after whom a trilogy of Ozu films is named. We'll talk about him in further depth in the coming weeks.

This is the first Ozu film that explicitly calls out the name of a season or evokes the passing of time in the title. It's a theme that could be found in all but two of his last ten films. That's something that we'll look at in greater detail at the end of the series.

Up next is I Was Born, But..., the third and final "But..." film, which is very enjoyable on its own, but he would later be re-work it into a technicolor sound comedy called Good Morning.

Cinema Ozu is a limited-run series of articles about the career and impact of Japanese filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. My primary intent is to chronicle my own journey through his films, a fair number of which I have seen, but even more of which I have not. The most essential research tools I have used are David Bordwell's book Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema and definitive Ozu fansite "Ozu-san".

The series is also timed to celebrate the July 2010 U.S. release of The Only Son and There Was a Father as a DVD double-set by The Criterion Collection. You can find all entries in Cinema Ozu here. New to the series? It's best to start from the beginning.