Noriko Smiling

'Late Spring, directed and co-written by Yasujiro Ozu, was released in 1949, which makes it an old film, or a film that has been new for a long time...' So begins this remarkable essay in narrative reconstruction, which elicits a world of meanings from the reticences of one classic Japanese movie, and reserves to the very end a resolution of its mystery. Adam Mars-Jones gives a virtuoso comeback performance as that lost figure from the earl days of cinema: the film explainer. There has never been a film book like this one.