I am a huge fan of Ozu, and particularly of these two films, both wonderful pieces from late in his career. Previous Ozu DVDs from Tartan have been quite good, and I certainly appreciate their making Ozu's movies available. Sadly, the DVD in this set for "An Autumn Afternoon," my favourite of all Ozu's films, has some very annoying technical problems. In the opening scenes the picture jerks as if missing frames, looks washed out, the frame jumps, and in general looks like what you'd expect from an amateur projectionist on school film night. Throughout the rest of the film the jerkiness continues from time to time and is annoyingly distracting. My wife, who is Japanese, noted that the sound and picture were well out of synch when the actor's lips moved during dialogue in some, but not most, scenes. I can imagine that some of these problems might be down to an old print that was the best available, but the jumpiness problem looks like a digitally inspired flaw. I emailed Tartan directly about this several days ago, but no response. Frankly, they need to clarify what's going on with this, and do better, or the new Eclipse "Late Ozu" DVDs from Criterion are going to seem like a much better way to go if you love Ozu's later movies. "Late Autumn" looks fine on the other DVD, but given the price of this set, I can't give more than two stars after the disappointment of what Tartan have done with "An Autumn Afternoon" and their failure to address or explain the issue.
