There Was a Father

Shuhei Horikawa is a widowed schoolteacher in a provincial town, raising his only son Ryohei on very little. On a school trip, he is playing go with a colleague while a group of pupils takes a boat out without permission; the boat capsizes and one of the boys drowns. Feeling responsible for the death, Shuhei resigns. He moves away with his son, then takes work in Tokyo while Ryohei, who is still of school age, stays behind to continue his education. The two remain apart for years, managing a bond that is affectionate yet distant in its everyday absence. When they meet again, Ryohei has grown up and followed his father into teaching.

The film was directed by Yasujirō Ozu, working from a screenplay he wrote with Tadao Ikeda and Takao Yanai. It is the sixth of the sixteen films he directed, coming after Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family and before Late Spring. Chishū Ryū plays Shuhei, with Shūji Sano as the adult Ryohei and Haruhiko Tsuda as the boy. The supporting cast includes Shin Saburi, Takeshi Sakamoto and Mitsuko Mito, among twenty-four credited performers. A drama from the Shochiku studio, it runs ninety-three minutes.

On IMDb, it holds a rating of 7.5 from around 3,500 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 7 from a considerably smaller number of votes.