JOHN GIANVITO, Harvard Film Archive:

"What audiences new to Ozu's universe will encounter is the work of a director exquisitely sensitized to the emotional latticework of human relations, most particularly those within the family. Perhaps no other filmmaker is so attuned to "the ties that bind," so able to evoke the poignancy of everyday heartaches and challenges, so skilled at capturing epiphanies amidst the commonplace, always with the unforced attentiveness of a great listener. Generally regarded as a director whose specialty was the "home drama," Ozu also directed films of social criticism, satires, melodramas, and even a gangster film. Regardless of the genre, however, human beings are privileged over narrative intricacies. As the director himself noted, "Naturally, a film must have some kind of structure or else it is not a film, but I feel that a picture isn't good if it has too much drama or too much action." Often lauded for their restraint and 'simplicity,' Ozu's films are, in fact, like all great works of art, endlessly revealing in their insights and possessed of numerous subtle complexities both stylistic and thematic. Whether they focus on the interaction of the old and the young or male and female, or the contrasts between the workplace and the homelife, or tradition and change, Ozu's observant eye has the rare power to draw the sympathetic viewer into unique emotional terrain. In the best of his work- and there are many titles that would fall into the category - he attains poetry."

WIM WENDERS:

"I could really accept these Ozu families, I've always accepted the way they worked. In a way, they are very traditional families. But I never had the feeling in an Ozu film that the structure of these families was repressive, or suppressive, of the individuals. Whereas I don't like American families at all. In American films, I mean. And in reality. These Japanese families are so strong to me, even though I have nothing to do with them: I have nothing to do with the way they eat, or with the way they sleep, or with the way they get drunk all the time. It has nothing to do with me; and I feel so close to them that, if I had to choose, I'd rather sleep on the floor, and sit my whole life on the floor, and get drunk everyday, and live in an Ozu family, than pass a single day as the son of Henry Fonda..."

Ozu filming "Flavour Of Green Rice Over Tea" (1952)