Yasujirō Ozu

Yasujirō Ozu started in silent comedies in the 1920s, then pivoted to weightier material in the 1930s: the space between generations, the pull between duty and desire, the small fractures inside ordinary households. His career ran until the early 1960s, ending in colour just as it had begun in silence. Late Spring arrived in 1949, Tokyo Story in 1953, An Autumn Afternoon in 1962—the last he'd make, dying on his sixtieth birthday in December 1963. The work outlasted him by miles. In 2012, when Sight & Sound polled the world's directors, 358 of them named Tokyo Story the greatest film ever made.