One Wonderful Sunday (1947) on Netflix
In postwar Tokyo, Masako and her fiancé Yuzo have thirty-five yen and one Sunday a week together. They set out to fill the day and to find a place to live.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb7.2/104,229 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Plot summary
Sunday is the day Masako and Yuzo, engaged, meet in Tokyo, and they have thirty-five yen to spend. Masako talks Yuzo into visiting an open house, whose price depresses him; he snaps at her cheerfulness, then they make up and both want a home of their own. The apartment they hear about turns out to be poor and too expensive. Yuzo plays baseball with children and damages a manjū shop, which costs him ten yen. A card leads them to a cabaret run by a man Yuzo knew in the army, but the manager bars him as too impoverished to enter. Yuzo considers turning to illegal means to get by.
Cast
- Toppa Utsumias Street Photographer
- Ichiro Namikias Street Photographer
- Shiro Mizutanias Waif
- Aguri Hidakaas Dancer
- Midori Ariyamaas Sono, the black-marketeer's mistress
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about One Wonderful Sunday (1947)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Because actors Isao Numazaki and Chieko Nakakita were unknown, the crew shot around Tokyo with a handheld camera hidden inside a box and a carrying-cloth; bystanders kept spoiling shots, and one man at Shinjuku Station mistook Kurosawa for a pickpocket when he nudged him out of frame.
- Isao Numazaki's lack of musical awareness became an issue during production, and Kurosawa and composer Tadashi Hattori spent days teaching him how to conduct the symphony for the film's climax.
- The film came out of a labour dispute: the stars of Kurosawa's previous film, No Regrets for Our Youth, left Toho to form Shintoho, which left Toho short of familiar contracted actors and relying on its directors.
- Kurosawa and his childhood friend and co-writer Keinosuke Uekusa disagreed over the film's climax: Kurosawa wanted real applause from the audience, while Uekusa wanted the applause built into the film's soundtrack.
- One Wonderful Sunday won awards for its screenplay and direction at the second annual Mainichi Film Awards, and that was the first award Kurosawa ever received for his work as a film director.
- The film's lighting and lenses were so poor that many scenes were shot in a sharp focus that could highlight only one actor at a time.
