Subarashiki Nichiyobi (aka One Wonderful Sunday) (1947)

A young unmarried couple (Isao Numazaki Chieko Nakakita) on their day off have only 35 yen between them. They attempt to find things to do that won't cost them money. Directed by Akira Kurosawa, what is intended to be a small tribute to penniless young lovers is rather untypical Kurosawa fare. It starts off promisingly but damn if the thing doesn't start to drag pretty quickly. It doesn't help that Numazaki's character is a rather surly unpleasant young man with little charm so try as one might, it's hard to give up much sympathy for him as he scowls and sulks. There's a wonderful sequence that shows what the film could have been. The couple imagine the cafe they're going to open when they get married and in the ruins of a bombed out building in the early evening, they dream of where everything will be and act out how they'll run the place. Alas, it is soon followed by what may be the low point in Kurosawa's filmography. During an interminable sequence in an abandoned ampitheatre as Nakakita directly faces the camera and pleads to the audience to applaud for all the poor young lovers in the world. I thought I'd toss my cookies!