From March 4-10, Film Forum will present a 4K restoration of Yasujiro Ozu’s postwar classic Late Spring, the 1949 film centers on the relationship between Noriko (Setsuko Hara) and her widower father Shukichi (Chishū Ryū), an absent minded professor who loves his daughter but fears she will never find a husband. The film was the first installment in Ozu’s “Noriko trilogy” which saw Hara play characters named Noriko, who are unrelated other than for the fact they’re all unmarried women in Japan. The film remains one of the most beloved entries in all of world cinema and is required viewing on the big screen, but if its status as a classic isn’t enough to convince you, here are five reasons why this is an unmissable event.

5) Insightful social setting

Ozu was a keen observer of Japan’s culture, who at times seems as fascinated with its unique rituals and becoming their protector, as he is with the more foreigner notion that not all of them should have been preserved. He presents this dichotomy beautifully in Late Spring which celebrates the bond between a daughter and father, while wondering if the treatment of women in Japan stayed in the prewar era.

4) Cinematography

Yuuharu Atsuta’s minimal camera movements and precise framing help give poignancy to Noriko’s worldview, with passions that seem to want to burst from the screen, but are contained, muted even, by societal restrictions. It’s expressionistic cinematography of the highest order, and it’s never looked as lovely as it does in the 4K restoration.

3) Supporting characters

While the supporting players all seem to address Noriko with suggestions about how she should lead her life, Ozu allows them to have worlds of their own to inhabit. No one in Late Spring exists merely to help advance the plot, Ozu’s writing (he co-wrote the screenplay with Kogo Noda) could fool one into thinking these people existed outside the page too.

2) Feminism

The film deals with marriage and how women were expected to find a husband before it was too late. Ozu depicts this, rather than supports this vision, and in fact one of the film’s twists comes from discovering Noriko has an ally in the person she least suspected. The film’s commentary on women’s rights is almost too subtle, and might pass by unperceived by some.

1) Setsuko Hara

Japan’s most luminous leading lady turns in a performance for the ages. Her Noriko is both modern and classic, introverted and social, few screen performances capture the dilemma of being alive and trying to find your place in the world with the grace of Hara’s. It’s a testament to the beauty of her work in Late Spring, that it’s rarely mentioned among the great screen performances, perhaps because she made everything seem so effortless.

For more information and tickets visit Film Forum.