One Wonderful Sunday (1947)

One Wonderful Sunday (“Subarashiki nichiyôbi”)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Written by Akira Kurosawa and Keinosuke Uekusa
1947/Japan
Tojo Company
First viewing/Hulu Plus

Masako: All you people, applaud. All you young lovers, applaud for your dreams.

This film provides a very interesting glimpse into the wreckage that was Toyko immediately after World War II.  The ending has some major problems but until then Kurosawa shows off his developing mastery.

Yuzo and Masako have been engaged since before the war but, despite working, are too poor to marry and set up household.  Being too honest to participate in the black market, Yuzo sees little way out.  The couple meets only on Sundays.  On this particular Sunday, they have to figure out a way to amuse themselves on only the 35 yen they share between them.  Masako’s challenge is to prevent Yuzo from sliding into complete despair.  She is relentlessly cheerful, recalling the dreams they used to share of one day opening a cafe.

The film follows the two as they engage in the activities open to them.  Most everything seems to go wrong.  They tour a model house which is hopelessly out of their price range; visit a filthy rented room that is similarly too expensive. Yuzo plays a game of sandlot baseball with some children and damages a shopowner’s sign.  Yuzo looks up an old army buddy who has opened a cabaret but it turns out the place is the hangout of gangsters and the man refuses to see him.  Then a torrential downpour starts.  They try to go to a concert but are priced out of the cheap seats when scalpers buy them all up.

The couple retreat to Yuzo’s flat, where he seems lost in depression and beyond the reach of Masako.  But they are young and together they somehow survive the day and plan for next Sunday.

Evidence of the American occupation is everywhere in this film from the ruins of bombed out buildings and empty lots to English-language signage all around.  The general run of Japanese seem to be ruthless profiteers out only for their own survival.  The lot of children seems to be particularly bleak.  What chance does a young couple that retains an ounce of idealism have? According to Kurosawa, there is hope if they can hold on to their dreams.

It is interesting to contrast the more muscular Kurosawa to the softer Ozu film of the same year.  Both One Wonderful Sunday and Record of a Tenement Gentleman explore Tokyo at its lowest ebb.  But though both films end with a plea for compassion, the poverty in the Ozu film is incidental to the human story while it seems to be part of a more political polemic in the Kurosawa.

Kurosawa makes dynamic use of his beloved rain and wind.  The scene in Yuzo’s apartment drags on endlessly as we watch him mope with and without the support of Masako.  But the length seemed to add to the realism for me.  The ending sequence, however, went on and on to much less effect only to culminate in some too obvious speechifying,  Nonetheless recommended to anyone interested in the period or the filmmaker.

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