“In the Sixties, each of the major Japanese studios—Toho, Shochiku, Toei and Nikkatsu—had their own theaters in Los Angeles, in which they played their films for Japanese audiences. An Autumn Afternoon was made in 1962 and Ozu died the following year, but the film played in 1969 at the Shochiku in Los Angeles. I saw it in the afternoon, and it took hold of me. It wouldn’t let go. I wasn’t sure why at the time.”
Writer/director Paul Schrader
This is how screenwriters Yasujirô Ozu and Kôgo Noda (according to Kogo’s widowed wife Shizu) collaborated on scripts that became classic movies; Tokyo Story, Late Spring, An Autumn Afternoon and Late Autumn. And while many of their most known work was made in 1950s and early ’60s, they first collaborated together on the 1927 lost silent film Sword of Penitence.
Their pre-writing routine seemed to daily include baths, naps, food, long walks, and a little bit of sake. They wrote scripts in about a month, after taking two months thinking through ideas. It appears that movies were Ozu’s life.
“You might also think that a director who made films with so much warmth, whose work is infused with such happiness and sorrow, must have had a contented life. The opposite was true. He was a chain-smoker, he was an alcoholic, he lived with his mother. His mother died about six months before he did. He never married, never had children. He lived for the cinema, and all he did was cinema. He didn’t really have any other life.”
Screenwriter Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver)
Film Comment, On Yasujirô Ozu