Kon Ichikawa (1957)
A comic satire of the postwar Japanese drive to economic prosperity and a higher education system which churns out graduates far in excess of the jobs available to exploit their skills: the naively optimistic protagonist starts off in a mind-numbing non-job in a brewery and, through a series of mishaps, works his way downwards. There are some beautiful images – especially an army of umbrellas in lashing rain at the start of the film – but the sound quality on the print I saw at BFI was at times so bad that Japanese subtitles appeared to have been added where necessary: with English subtitles also taking up part of the frame, there was occasionally little but writing to see. The comedy seems pretty broad and the resources of Hiroshi Kawaguchi, the young actor in the leading role, are not enough to prevent the story becoming, quite soon, obvious and monotonous.
8 July 2008
