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If you love Ozu you do not need to be told that "An Autumn Afternoon" stars Chishû Ryû, who appeared in almost every film Ozu ever made. He always plays, we feel, the Ozu character, reserved, neat, quiet, and, like Ozu himself, often a heavy drinker, more meditative than demonstrative. In "An Autumn Afternoon," his Hirayama is a salaryman at an unspecified factory, who lives with his daughter Michiko (Shima Iwashita), 24, and son Kazuo (Shinichirô Mikami) a little younger. An older son, Koichi (Keiji Sada), is already married. Hirayama is tall, slender, always well-dressed. What he feels is left to us to infer; Ozu prefers the empathy of the audience to dialogue revealing inner feelings. That monosyllable "ummm" is used over and again as Chishû Ryû's character respond without committing themselves.
Two or three times in "An Autumn Afternoon," I heard the older son also using it, and I smiled with recognition.
The film takes place in Hirayama's office and home, in a few bars and restaurants, and in his son's home. A great many scenes involve steady drinking. These have echoes in Ozu's work; a reunion with an old teacher can also be seen in the similar story of "There Was a Father" (1942), also starring the neither young nor old Chishû Ryû, this one living at home with his son.