melancholy Hirayama drunkenly sings snatches of the Warship March. His last words in the film are "Alone, eh?". Cast Chishū Ryū as Shūhei Hirayama Shima Iwashita as Michiko Hirayama Keiji Sada as Kōichi Hirayama Mariko Okada as Akiko Hirayama Teruo Yoshida as Yutaka Miura Noriko Maki as Fusako Taguchi Shin'ichirō Mikami as Kazuo Hirayama Nobuo Nakamura as Shūzō Kawai Kuniko Miyake as Nobuko Kawai, his wife Eijirō Tōno as Seitarō Sakuma, "The Gourd" Haruko Sugimura as Tomoko Sakuma, his daughter Kyōko Kishida as the proprietor of the bar "Kaoru" Ryūji Kita as Shin Horie Michiyo Kan as Tamako, his second wife Daisuke Katō as Yoshitarō Sakamoto Tsūzai Sugawara as Sugai Masao Oda as Watanabe Toyo Takahashi as Waitress at "Wakamatsu" Shinobu Asaji as Yōko Sasaki, Shūhei's secretary Matsuko Shiga as Woman at Kōichi and Akiko's apartment Fujio Suga as First Tipsy Customer at "Kaoru" Zen'ichi Inagawa as Second Tipsy Customer at "Kaoru" Production It was shot using Agfacolor, and the credits of the film are placed before a backdrop of painted fronds instead of the sackcloth used in all of Ozu's films since A Story of Floating Weeds in 1934. The Japanese title, "A Taste of Sanma", refers to the sanma or Pacific saury fish. As a seasonal food, sanma is used in Japanese culture to represent autumn. Ozu chose this as representative of the changes taken place in Japan (cf. the Spring and Autumn Period). Release Reception An Autumn Afternoon is widely regarded as a masterpiece. Film critic Roger Ebert placed the film in his "Great Movies" collection, writing, "From time to time I return to Ozu feeling a need to be calmed and restored. He is a man with a profound understanding of human nature, about which he makes no dramatic statements. We are here, we hope to be happy, we want to do well, we are locked within our aloneness, life goes on." On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 95% rating based on 22 reviews, with an average rating of 8.8/10. Home media The Criterion Collection released the film in the US on DVD in 2008, and Blu-ray in 2014. In 2011, the BFI released a Region 2 Dual Format Edition (Blu-ray + DVD). Included with this release is a standard definition presentation of A Hen in the Wind. It was shown as part of the Cannes Classics section of the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. References