One Wonderful Sunday

I've briefly mentioned One Wonderful Sunday once or twice before, and I finally got around to re-watching it off of Criterion's Eclipse Series box set of early Akira Kurosawa movies.

Yuzo (Isao Numasaki) is a young man who at the start of the movie is waiting for somebody. He's clearly in poor financial circumstances, as he sees a half-smoked cigarette on the ground and thinks seriously about picking it up to smoke. The person he's waiting for is his girlfriend Masako (Chieko Nakakita), and her arrival shames him into not picking up the cigarette even though, as he tells her, he hasn't had a smoke in three days.

This is Sunday, presumably their one day off during the week as it's postwar Japan and I think it wasn't uncommon to work 5-1/2 day weeks. The two plan to spend the day together... but there's one problem. Between the two of them, they only have ¥35 between them, which is a paltry sum. Yuzo clearly feels like he's not enough of a man for not being able to do right by Masako financially.

They start spending their day together, and immediately money -- or more accurately the lock of it -- crops up, as it's going to do again and again throughout the day. They see an open house for a new type of house construction. They'd love to have a place of their own, but even this sort of lower-quality build costs ¥100,000, or far beyond their means. They can't even afford to live on their own, Yuzo living with a friend and Masako living with her sister.

Still, the two try to have fun, but after a series of disappointments, they realize they've got just enough money to get tickets to the concert that includes Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. But just before they get to the ticket window, somebody buys up all the ¥10 tickets and decides to start scalping them for ¥15, right in front of the box office! And, having spent a bit of that ¥35 the couple started off with, they can't afford the higher price for the tickets.

One Wonderful Sunday is one wonderful movie, even though most people talk about it being one of Kurosawa's "lesser" movies. In some ways that's true, if only because on the face of it the movie isn't particularly big in scope. There's also one scene near the end where Masako breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the audience that a lot of reviewers have some difficulty with. (I didn't.) However, beneath the surface there's really a lot of subtle messages about love and hardship and what money can do to people even though we all need it. The movie is also a nice look at a Tokyo that probably doesn't exist any more.

I don't think that One Wonderful Sunday is available as a standalone DVD, but the Eclipse box set is in my opinion certainly worth it.