Mr Thank You *****

by Allan Fish

(Japan 1936 76m) DVD2 (Japan only)

Aka. Arigato-San

The Lives of Five Thieves

d/w  Hiroshi Shimizu  novel  Yasunari Kawabata  ph  Isamu Aoki  m  Keizo Horiuchi 

Ken Uehara (Mr Thank You), Michiko Kuwano, Mayumi Tsukiji, Kaoru Futaba, Takashi Ishiyama, Einosuke Naka, Reikichi Kawamura,

One of the travesties of film history is the plight in retrospect of Hiroshi Shimizu, one of the great Japanese directors of the thirties.  Kenji Mizoguchi once said of him that “where the likes of myself and Ozu get films made by hard work, Shimizu is a genius.”  Belatedly Mikio Naruse and even Sadao Yamanaka have been given their dues in the west, but Shimizu virtually never.  Part of the reason for his neglect was that all his major work was done in the thirties, whereas Mizoguchi, Ozu and even Naruse made great films after 1950, when Rashomon made the west thirsty for more Nippon fare.  Shimizu had slipped the west by. 

            A friendly young bus driver has gained the nickname of Mr Thank You from his passengers and friends because of his incredible politeness towards everyone.  Anyone he passes along the way he thanks, and anyone he accepts onto his bus he greets like a member of his own family.  One day, he stops off at the small coastal town of Shichichenko to take a few passengers to Tokyo, including a young girl who’s been forced to leave the village following a scandal, and another young girl, somewhat more worldly wise, who is vaguely attracted to the driver. 

            The film begins with images of a small bus making its way across the mountain track, stopping for workmen, a horse and cart, woodcutters, women laden with goods and even geese.  He thanks them all, and yet his cheerfulness belies an inner sadness.  At one point in the journey he bemoans that he “might as well be driving a hearse“, continually ferrying young girls ‘over the pass’, from whence they will never return, a subtle euphemism for falling into prostitution.  He himself has dreams of setting up his own business and buying a Chevrolet, but he’s brought down to earth by the plight of his passengers, day after day.  He always agrees to take messages, even shop for the latest records, for those he picks up along the way.  People wait to get on his bus rather than travel as early as they might have liked, while others happily get on and off to walk a bit. 

            Many might say that Shimizu’s journey doesn’t necessarily get anywhere, but everything is said during the journey, which in itself becomes a microcosm for the journey then taken by Japan during the world’s depression.  We see poverty, sorrow and desperation all around, and feel it all the more because we, through the camera, seem to be passengers ourselves.  One of the ways Shimizu achieves this is by showing the bus from both front and, especially, back.  There’s something deliberate in how certain characters are shot from behind when speaking and others from the front.  The paradox created is that though the scenes shot from behind of course show where they are going, the low-key lighting serves to accentuate the feeling of hopelessness the protagonists feel.  They’re not going to a definitely better life, they’re rather going to a life which will be at least different.  They may end up coming back as despondently as the young men passed by the bus, defeated in their attempts to find employment, but they can only try. 

            Shimizu’s greatest asset is how his camera seems to move when it actually doesn’t, the only real moving shots are shot from the conveyance, much of the rest of the film is shot from a still camera.  He’s helped, too, by his actors, with future Naruse regular Uehara excellent as the eponymous selfless bus driver and with a lovely turn from Kuwano (who tragically died at 31 from pregnancy complications) as a world weary young girl who creates one of the great iconic shots in Japanese cinema when she lights a cigarette and the circles of smoke drift through the bus like a wave of palpable eroticism, that forces two men to light up themselves to take their mind off it.  As John Gillet observed, “Shimizu perfected a visual language wedded to a poetic sensibility that has made his comparative obvlision a tragedy for lovers of cinema everywhere.”  Amen.