Directors, as they age, usually must either move with the times or find themselves waiting by a silent phone. Since the days of D.W. Griffith, Hollywood has been full of once lordly directors who, having fallen out of fashion, are relegated to telling anecdotes about their glory days to deferential young film buffs, while plotting comebacks that never quite materialize.
The situation in Japan is somewhat different, since graying directorial sensei are more likely to find a sympathetic ear from the graying executives who have green-light authority, even when said sensei haven't rung the box office gong in years or, in some cases, decades.
Still, most over-60 directors, who may have come into the industry when it was in its postwar Golden Age, are no longer making films in the manner of their Golden Age seniors. The directors filming the Ozu tributes are all boomers or younger, and can afford the luxury of looking retro.
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