1947 ‘素晴らしき日曜日’ Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Yuzo and his fiancée Masako spend their Sunday afternoon together, trying to have a good time on just thirty-five yen. They manage to have many small adventures, especially because Masako's optimism and belief in dreams is able to lift Yuzo from his realistic despair.
Subarashiki nichiyōbi, Una meravigliosa domenica
A military vehicle interrupts a stickball game, and then a cart does. The kids just want to play, and the world gets in the way, first the Occupation and then the old world. Masako and Yuzo wander the city in poverty, trying to find a perfect moment, trying to make their last 35 yen count on the one day a week they have together, and the old world and the new keep interrupting them. The blackmarket has its allure; the cabaret and the zoo and the rain all have their place in this daylong date.
It's not as simple a tale as it seems. Two people spend the day together on a little bit of money, but both of those…
YES!!!!!
Kurosawa made a neorealist flick (my favorite genre) littered with rubble, trash and working class despair, but he also coupled the genre's melancholia with an optimistic brand of fantasy that borders into the lyricism of Murnau, the escapism of Fellini, and the humanism of Ozu. How was I not going to fall head-over-heels with this? It was like watching BICYCLE THIEVES relocated in bomb-desolated Japan, a country reduced to garbage and poverty, with a citizenry desperate to provide for their own. The mis-en-scene is riddled with a kind of post-Hiroshima chaos, wiping away houses that can no longer be afforded, food that can't be purchased, entertainment that can't be enjoyed, and dreams that can't be fulfilled.
Income disparity in…
Akira Kurosawa has earned the reputation of being not only one of Japan's greatest ever filmmakers, but also possibly the greatest director who ever lived anywhere. His quintessentially cinematic eye and verve for captivating storytelling earned the bulk of their respect through the middle section of his filmic output, and while the tail-end of his career found Kurosawa in a critical and commercial rut that would, thankfully, be strongly reevaluated as time passed... No one really gives a shit about Kurosawa's career throughout most of the 1940s. One would think that such a revered filmmaker would be closely scrutinized by even novice film enthusiasts all the way from the beginning, but in reality, Kurosawa's wartime and immediate postwar output is…
One Wonderful Sunday is first Kurosawa film that I actually liked in this series and main reason for that is couple of good performances , good storytelling aspects and some nice music that we can listen during runtime and expecely during final act .
Characters were here done in good way and this time I was able to connect myself with them so that was nice surprise to me .
Film also had that romantic feel around it and chemistry between our two leads were rather cute together and by that I mean our female character .
Ending was heartwarming to and it gived nice conclusion .
So this was in end one good movie .
🔜 Drunken Angel
This marks my 8th 5-star Kurosawa feature.... So obviously I'm in a too deep love affair with his work.. But God, if it didn't just grow 10 times deeper after watching this.
Why did I not know about this film?! Why have only 678 people logged it on letterboxd? Why are the majority of the reviews so middling?
This is surely a prime example of the subjectivity of film. My mind wandered in the film, but always to memories, moments, and ideas that were close to me. I suppose that's what compounded the impact of the film - but I find that Kurosawa so often can do this to me. He manufactures the perfect vehicles for imaginative worlds, leading the…
I did not expect to love this film as much as I did.
One Wonderful Sunday has an incredibly simplistic plot: a couple spends their Sunday together with barely any money and still make the most of it. That’s the story, but it’s so much more than that. While being an effective social commentary (similar to but not quite on the level of Bicycle Thieves), One Wonderful Sunday manages to be contagiously optimistic and wholesome. I do think the film would’ve benefited from a little more subtlety, however the grace Kurosawa exhibits as a young director is beyond impressive.
I also find it fascinating that this film was made at the same time of Italian neorealist films over 6,000 miles away. The style may not be an exact match to De Sica, but the resemblance is undeniable.
8.8 / 10
Akira Kurosawa movies ranked: boxd.it/cOTI2
This felt different from many of Kurosawa’s other works, since it basically is a romantic comedy set in the post war Japan.
The movie started out very strong and presented the young lovers well. The realist Yozu and the dreamer Masako, who go on a date every Sunday and this time they only have 35 yen to get them a wonderful Sunday.
The beginning of the movie had most of the comedy, which added a cozy feel, while they still presented issues with poverty.
All of this made me think of it as a Japanese Bergman movie, but as the movie went on it sadly lost that feel.
The middle of the movie had many…
Kurosawa seems a lot more political in his early work from the 1940s. Accordingly One Wonderful Sunday is the best kind of melancholic social drama, full of hardships but a lovely story, a truly uplifting film of working people with real problems. Japan was changing as its economy recovered, and One Wonderful Sunday depicts new houses, soldiers finding jobs, and bombed settings. It is about characters with love but not money. Poverty allows them to imagine. You only realise the value of money when you're broke is part of the message here, as inequality plays in the periphery.
One Wonderful Sunday is sweet and funny, starting off with Kurosawa at his lightest, but the middle depicts perhaps his most real…
A film which has a heart of its own, but also the hearts of many if not all of us.
Films like One Wonderful Sunday make me love cinema
This film became my favorite Kurosawa 10 minutes before it was over because the experience that I had just lived is one that my soul can't reject. It's a neorealist tale that for me is impossible to hate just for how personal it feels and how it digs its way to our hearts without a struggle. The passion of Kurosawa's soul and heart reaches all of us who feel or have felt. That internal flame which one can barely grasp when the times are dark, shines the brightest here.
For me…
Kurosawa grasps at faint glimmers of hope amongst the postwar gloom of a demoralised Japan in this elegantly composed and extraordinarily humanist work that sensitively mixes social realism with underclass romance - his finest, most endearing film yet.
Most striking about One Wonderful Sunday is the meditative pacing where Kurosawa allows scenes to go on and on through periods of silence and inactivity. Tarkovsky apparently once said “give a shot enough time, and meaning will be formed of its own accord, but too many cuts can disrupt this.” This can certainly be said about the languorous use of long takes employed here, where simply watching the two lovers inhabit the inhospitable spaces they end up in, alone, conveys a wealth…
The earliest Kurosawa I've seen to date, and it’s super interesting to watch this play as a fairly effortless switch from solemn neorealism to an amazing second half of stylistic breakthroughs (namely the energetic shot compositions), which seems as if it may have been the jumping-off point for both him + Japanese cinema breaking out beyond Japan. Mighty good stuff.
Here's a post-war date that sums up the depression period. I definitely loved the first half better than the concluding one. In their sorry state they got in so many amusing situation, it had me laughed out loud, while the second portion dwelt too much in depression and self-pity. No doubt symbolic for so many former soldiers and their lovers at the time. A big sense of hopelessness, and the film mainly focused on that, with a glimmer of hope thrown in from time to time, only mostly to let the leads down again. Yet you feel their luck will eventually change. Just not this wonderful Sunday. Saddening and beautiful.