After shamelessly pilfering the title for a recent post, I wanted to see Kurosawa Akira's One Wonderful Sunday. It's available on DVD as part of a Postwar Kurosawa set in Criterion's Eclipse series.
The film, made in 1947, is a contemporary drama about an almost penniless young couple on a date in Tokyo. He's an ex-soldier whose dreams have been ground down by the impossibility of escaping poverty. She's the spiritual cousin of Toyo, the poor but preternaturally cheerful office worker/toy rabbit maker in Kurosawa's Ikiru. If you've ever wanted to spend more time with Toyo, here is your chance.
The first half is superb: well-paced and whip-smart. He trying to maneuver her back to his room; she resisting. An encounter with a war orphan. The pall of the black market and organized crime. The shame of being shabby. Even a comedic visit to the zoo.
Something goes very wrong with the pacing in the second half, relegating this from masterpiece to interesting. But even as the movie goes off the rails, it astounds and delights us with an audacious appeal for audience participation that puts Peter Pan to shame.
What most impressed me was the leftist rhetoric. "I wish people in big houses would think about people like us for a change," says Masako, the young woman. This was the last time that the idea of giving the working classes a fair deal was broadly respectable, and it's music to the ears.
And even though they get no help in this film, we now know that the couple and most everyone else were able to work their way out of poverty over the next decade. Time has provided the happy ending.
--Julian
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