unranked personal listing, in chronological order, of the top 100 films, both Japanese and non-Japanese, of all time. One of the works he selected was Late Spring, with the following comment: "[Ozu's] characteristic camera work was imitated by many directors abroads [sic] as well, i.e., many people saw and see Mr. Ozu’s movies, right? That’s good. Indeed, one can learn pretty much from his movies. Young prospective movie makers in Japan should, I hope, see more of Ozu’s work. Ah, it was really good times when Mr. Ozu, Mr. Naruse and/or Mr. Mizoguchi were all making movies!" Reception and reputation of the film outside Japan New Yorker Films released the film in North America on July 21, 1972. A newspaper clipping, dated August 6, 1972, indicates that, of the New York-based critics of the time, six (Stuart Byron of The Village Voice, Charles Michener of Newsweek, Vincent Canby of The New York Times, Archer Winsten of The New York Post, Judith Crist of The Today Show and Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic) gave the work a favorable review and one critic (John Simon of New York magazine) gave it a "mixed" review. Canby observed that "the difficulty with Ozu is not in appreciating his films... [but] in describing an Ozu work in a way that doesn't diminish it, that doesn't reduce it to an inventory of his austere techniques, and that accurately reflects the unsentimental humanism of his discipline." He called the characters played by Ryu and Hara "immensely affecting—gentle, loving, amused, thinking and feeling beings," and praised the filmmaker for his "profound respect for [the characters'] privacy, for the mystery of their emotions. Because of this—not in spite of this—his films, of which Late Spring is one of the finest, are so moving." Stuart Byron of The Village Voice called Late Spring "Ozu’s greatest achievement and, thus, one of the ten best films of all time." In Variety, reviewer Robert B. Frederick (under the pseudonym "Robe") also had high praise for the work. "Although made in 1949," he wrote, "this infrequently-seen example of the cinematic mastery of the late Yasujirō Ozu... compares more than favorably with any major Japanese film... A heartwarming and very worthy cinematic effort." Modern genre critics equally reviewed the film positively, giving the film an aggregate score of 100% on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes from 24 reviews, with an average score of