Hou Hsiao-Hsien on Ozu

(video by warong)

In the movies of Ozu family is a backdrop, says Hou Hsiao-Hsien: it's a study of a society in evolution: a daughter gets eventually married; only, this is observed on slightly different historic periods, and the difference is of two or three years, the end of the forties, the beginning of the fifties, the middle of the fifties: the evolution of post-war Japanese society followed very slowly, with great patience and love for the detail.

(Hou Hsiao-Hsien)