Sanshiro Sugata

Here’s another film by Akira Kurosawa: Our Wonderful Sunday. This is from 1947 from the post-war era and set in the post-war era.

Films such as this are reason enough to subscribe to a service such as The Criterion Channel. It’s no accident that Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress is reported to be a large inspiration for Lucas’ Star Wars. Kurosawa is capable (for better and for worse) of the same kind of stylistic corniness of both Spielberg and Lucas.

In only his seventh film as a director (he co-wrote this as well), Kurosawa shows he also has a subtle artistic temperament as well. One Wonderful Sunday is about a young couple trying to put their lives together. They are not yet married. Both are working at low-paying jobs. They can apparently manage to meet and spend time with each other only on Sundays. The prospects of making enough to get married seem remote. He lives in a squalid apartment. She lives with her family of a dozen or more.

Yuzo (played splendidly by Isao Numasaki) is a brooding young man fresh out of the army who is struggling to find a way out of the indignity of being dirt poor. His girlfriend, Masako, (played very well by Chieko Nakakita) is a faithful, optimistic sort. Both are decent people. They’ll have nothing to do with the quick money to be made in the black market.

But nice guys are apparently finishing last, and this gets Yuzo down. The film is based around a Sunday when they are out on an extended date, trying to find some fun on about 30 Yen each in pocket money. Not much is going Yuzo’s way. And he appears to be a morose character by nature. Masako is the dutiful woman but she can’t snap him out of it.

This is an almost uniquely human-proportioned movie. No one is larger than life. The events are mostly common. The acting is exquisitely understated most of the time. The writing and direction (up to a point) are crisp and smart.

But I think Timothy will think I’m making this all up that (egads!) this is yet another movie I’ve watched that had a little trouble ending well. And this is not just my opinion if you read the history of the film. For some reason, this film goes from a gritty, slice-of-real-life, almost documentary style to surrealism. And if the surrealism doesn’t fall flat (it fell flat for me), the remonstrations for crowed participation by Masako fall flat as well. Apparently both Japanese and American audiences did not applaud as they were prompted to as Kurosawa sort of plays his Tinker Bell “clap if you believe” card.

Those objections aside, this is a quality film and worth watching.

As we continue on with some Akira Kurosawa film, this next one is noteworthy as one of the earliest collaborations between Akira Kurosawa and Toshirô Mifune, I think this is Mifune’s first major film. They would go on to collaborate in at least 15 other films including Seven Samurai.

I’m a big fan of those collaborations. But Kurosawa is by no means faultless (although I can’t recall a bad performance by Mifune).

The star of this one is actually Takashi Shimura who plays the irascible doctor, Sanada. You’ve seen him in other Kurosawa films — in fact he appeared in 21 of Kurosawa’s 30 film going by Wiki — a longer collaboration than even that of Mifune.

Both Mifune and especially Shimura are 100% into their parts. But the material is thin. Mifune plays a Yakuza man, Matsunaga, who has TB. He goes to Dr. Sanada (Shimura) for treatment. Sparks fly, which was inevitable if you are giving the world’s worst bedside manner to a Yakuza thug.

They never going anywhere in this story. The good girl might pine for the bad boy, but nothing comes of it. The movie is seemingly leading to some kind of redemption for Matsunaga, the Yakuza. But that doesn’t fizzle out so much as it is never even attempted. You wonder why Mifune is in the picture at all.

It’s a mess and they probably knew it as they were shooting it. I believe it’s known that Kurosawa could make up a lot of stuff as he went along. If so, that could obviously lead you down some cul-de-sacs as well.

I tell ya, this Dr. Sanada could give Dr. McCoy a run for his money in terms of rough bedside manner. More than once he is physically attacked by Matsunaga, and you can’t blame Matsunaga.

Had there been a more in-depth study of the relationship between irascible doctor and Yakuza patient, you could have had something. But Kurosawa never weaves much of a tapestry in any of the story lines.

Does our good doctor change from his encounter with the tough-guy Yakuza? No. Again, this seems a story that I’m not sure why they bothered. They didn’t take anything much of anywhere. Scene-to-scene there are interesting moments here and there. But it doesn’t lead anywhere. There is not one brick laid upon the other. And you can’t fault me for not understanding the Japanese aesthetic. I’ve watched tons of Japanese films and that criticism would be reserved for the stupid or the lame.

Still, it’s a historically important film considering this early collaboration between Akira Kurosawa and Toshirô Mifune. I should say the collaboration is really a three-fer between Akira Kurosawa, Toshirô Mifune, and the way over-the-top dark eye shadow they used on Mifune to make him look ill. He simply looked like a zombie.



This was your typical doctor/patient relationship: