Hogaraka ni ayume

Nicely paced film, with an expected ending based on the obvious influences.

An interesting film where Ozu is still working towards his later skills. The gangster scenes are wholly unreal- a never-land out of Hollywood films where gangsters play golf and billiards and pick pockets or hold up people now and then- certainly we don't see them making enough to keep them in the style to which they appear accustomed. The most interesting aspect is that the demure and innocent heroine and her family are the only unwesternised characters in the film: they live in a traditional house, wear traditional clothes- indeed, in contrast to her criminal rival for Ken's love, she even uses a Japanese-character type-writer in the office they work in.

George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends -- better known as the Quakers -- wrote:

"Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations wherever you come; that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people, and to them; then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone; whereby in them you may be a blessing, and make the witness of God in them to bless you."

and from that text, Yasujiro took this sermonizing movie. It's the story of a gangster who falls in love with a nice girl, and she with him. When she finds out what he does, however, she tells him that unless he reforms, she will never see him again. He quits the underworld, and gets a job as a window washer, but his old buddies want him to come in on a job....

Looking at Ozu's post-war movies, it's hard to picture his pre-war output. His camera is in almost constant motion. His characters wear modern clothes and travel by car, and Japanese society is not struggling to maintain its balance and traditional values, under siege by international forces. His characters seek to learn what they can from the outside world, whether they be from movie posters on the wall, or radical Western theologian. Given that Ozu was making a modern drama in an essentially Western medium, this has an inner logic. Yet the rather straightforward and optimistic attitude of this movie rings false. His stronger works in this era were more complicated, more darkly humorous, almost sardonic in their attitude when happy, and bleak when tragic.

The performances are fine, particularly that of Hisao Yoshitani as the protagonist's pugnacious and loyal friend. However, the optimism of Japanese society in this era turned out to be arrogance, and the easy answers of this movie a chimera.

Ozu is one of my top 3 directors and I have just loved all his movies I have seen till now except this one. "I Was Born, But..." which was made just 2 years after this movie was a delightful surprise. It was a comedy/drama centered around kids. Compared with that it feels like it is inspired from western movies. And Ozu's doesn't seems to have a developed a strong style of his own.

Ozu's later movies are very similar in topic to each other. But they are never clichéd. He delights in subverting the genres and breaking the established norms. But "Walk Cheerfully" is very clichéd. Yes, there are few Ozu touches but as such it is not an Ozu movie.

Of course this is just the start of his career. But it just goes to show me that even he made bad movies. This movie is average if you consider the time it was made in. But compared to other Ozu movies it is just awful. I wouldn't recommend this to his fans.

A genuine rarity, an Ozu gangster movie, in which a conman falls for one of his targets, achieving redemption through love in a way that is highly reminiscent of Frank Borzage's tales of romantic salvation. Ozu achieves a variety of moods, from the playful hand signals and spontaneous dance routines that gangsters use to greet each other, to the passion of not only romantic love but fraternal devotion between the conman and his best buddy, resulting in one of his most macho movies as well as one of his most tender. Incidentally, Ozu gives a lot of visual time in this film to close-up shots of people's feet, a motif I don't quite understand in its relation to the movie but is certainly striking.