Shin Saburi

Despite dispensing advice in a calm manner to strangers, a businessman clashes with his elder daughter over her choice of a husband.

Yasujiro Ozu’s frequent leading man Chishu Ryu is riveting as Shuhei, a widowed high school teacher who finds that the more he tries to do what is best for his son’s future, the more they are separated. Though primarily a delicately wrought story of parental love, There Was a Father offers themes of sacrifice that were deemed appropriately patriotic by Japanese censors at the time of its release during World War II, making it a uniquely political film in Ozu’s body of work.

A collection of crisscrossing miniature studies of love and family at a remote resort in the mountains. With delicate and surprising humor, it paints a timeless portrait of loneliness and the human need to connect.

Comedy turns to pathos in Yasujiro Ozu's tale of a group of businessmen who conspire to match-make for a widow and her daughter.