There is a Frank Caapra populism about One Wonderful Sunday's occasional moments of corny sentimental hopefulness. But above all this is Japan just after the war, shabby, despairing, scrambling to get back on its feet. This couple is bipolar: the girl is cheery -- but she also has a long crying jag. The guy is angry and humiliated at he loss of manhood in his not being able to afford minimal entertainments on the couple's one day off together out of the week; but he also has his energetic surges of courage and hope. One doesn't quite believe in it. But it holds us prisoner for the run of the film. He's already that good, even despite the wrong notes and the corniness.
This is such a deeply sad, depressing film: I immediately thought of Dodes'ka-den , the powerful multi-thread tale about depression and poverty Kurosawa made in the early Seventies, when he was himself going through a period of despair. And of course there is the premature reference to a masterpiece to come, Ikiru, in the swing-in-the- park scene. The style is strange, sometimes compelling, sometimes agonizing. We're dragged along helplessly on a sine curve of momentary happiness and longer periods of gloom. What makes it almost unbearable to watch is the way each shot or scene is held too long, none more than the final one where Yuzo (Isao Numasaki) goes up on the stage of the empty ampitheatre and mock-conducts almost a whole movement of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. It's agonizing. It's terrible.
But there's something also so humanistic (to an absurd extreme, as in Italian neorealism, which may have been an influence, as well as silent film, Chaplin) that you balk at it and at the same time can't resist it. The appeal of the girl, Masako (Chieko Nakakita) to the audience, said to have fallen on deaf ears in Japan but been loudly responded to in France, to us now just seems anachronism, a violation of the illusion. I am personally disturbed by the casting, because Masako looks a little homely, her face slightly bloated (was that considered pretty in 1947 Japan?) while Yuzo, with his handsome head of hair, is more presentable. At the same time this makes it easy to see them as married, twenty years or more later on, and what is so touching is the faith that in fact they will somehow stay together, and will somehow make a family, and survive, thrive even. But the whole thing shows us how Kurosawa's belief in the human spirit was very close to pessimism and despair. Mr. Watanabe in Ikiru almost gives up, and in Dodes-ka-den the little boy and his father die. There's a moment when it looks like Yuzo may slit his writs. Does playing orchestra conductor really mean he's going to make it? There's a convention here that's too antiquated to buy into. It makes them seem simply deranged -- or more desperate than we'll ever know.
Ticket scalpers are evil! Dante must have a bolgia in Hell for them.
This is such a deeply sad, depressing film: I immediately thought of Dodes'ka-den , the powerful multi-thread tale about depression and poverty Kurosawa made in the early Seventies, when he was himself going through a period of despair. And of course there is the premature reference to a masterpiece to come, Ikiru, in the swing-in-the- park scene. The style is strange, sometimes compelling, sometimes agonizing. We're dragged along helplessly on a sine curve of momentary happiness and longer periods of gloom. What makes it almost unbearable to watch is the way each shot or scene is held too long, none more than the final one where Yuzo (Isao Numasaki) goes up on the stage of the empty ampitheatre and mock-conducts almost a whole movement of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. It's agonizing. It's terrible.
But there's something also so humanistic (to an absurd extreme, as in Italian neorealism, which may have been an influence, as well as silent film, Chaplin) that you balk at it and at the same time can't resist it. The appeal of the girl, Masako (Chieko Nakakita) to the audience, said to have fallen on deaf ears in Japan but been loudly responded to in France, to us now just seems anachronism, a violation of the illusion. I am personally disturbed by the casting, because Masako looks a little homely, her face slightly bloated (was that considered pretty in 1947 Japan?) while Yuzo, with his handsome head of hair, is more presentable. At the same time this makes it easy to see them as married, twenty years or more later on, and what is so touching is the faith that in fact they will somehow stay together, and will somehow make a family, and survive, thrive even. But the whole thing shows us how Kurosawa's belief in the human spirit was very close to pessimism and despair. Mr. Watanabe in Ikiru almost gives up, and in Dodes-ka-den the little boy and his father die. There's a moment when it looks like Yuzo may slit his writs. Does playing orchestra conductor really mean he's going to make it? There's a convention here that's too antiquated to buy into. It makes them seem simply deranged -- or more desperate than we'll ever know.
Ticket scalpers are evil! Dante must have a bolgia in Hell for them.