Cinema
Mr. Thank You
有りがたうさん
Hiroshi Shimizu · 1936
Synopsis
A bus driver, nicknamed Mr. Thank You because he thanks every pedestrian who steps aside, connects a mountain village on the Izu peninsula to a station in Tokyo, according to Dennis Schwartz. On board, according to the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, are a man with a false moustache, a modern young woman who smokes and drinks, a poor mother and her daughter who is being taken away to be sold. Itinerant performers and Korean labourers pass along the road; a young Korean woman asks him to watch over her father's grave before she leaves to build another road.
Context
The film is based on a very short story, a few pages long, published in 1925 by a writer who later received the Nobel Prize. It was shot entirely on location, in and around the bus, and without a written script according to Dennis Schwartz. The Berkeley film archive sees in it, following the critic Alan Stanbrook, the film of its director that comes closest to a portrait of the society of the thirties, and the Pyongyang Review of Books notes the images of Korean workers dressed in white on the roads of Izu.
Who it is for
Seventy-six minutes, with no continuous plot: the bus goes up and down. A subtitled version circulates in the United States.
Prizes and reception
Counted by Kotobank among its author's major films, it was released on DVD in the United States in a heritage collection.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.