ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the affective and spatial parameters of the colour blue in Yasujiro Ozu's An Autumn Afternoon, by thinking through Gaston Bachelard's phenomenology of space and Carol Mavor's writing on colours, respectively. An Autumn Afternoon, one of Ozu's six films in colour, announces an architecture of the house that seems to belong to the world of gestures, intimacy and flimsiness, rather than to the domain of geometrical spaces and the discourse of housing. Arguably, An Autumn Afternoon, as well as Ozu's other post-war films, responds to and critically engages with the so-called Western influences. An Autumn Afternoon, chronicles the domestic life of widower Shuhei Hirayama and two of his children, Michiko and Kazuo. Mavor explores the colour blue in a remarkable diverse spectrum of works, ranging from Camera Lucida and Hiroshima Mon Amour to La Jetee and Sans Soleil. Mavor proposes a reading of the colour blue that exists on the level of embodied experiences, affect and memory.
