Maybe I'll Dream About A Man Like That

Mr. Thank You (1936)
directed by Hiroshi Shimizu
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Carnegie Library

Mr. Thank You is the movie to watch in March if your winter was too long and the snow falls outside in wet clumps from trees.  It is a great open-air movie and a great movie about motion: coastlines, cigarette smoke, passenger coaches on mountain roads.  I thought of summer, and best of all, of summer films, watched late at night, full of low conversations and pretty June girls.

I can't say enough about the camera.  Forward images melt into reverse shots while the eponymous driver waves from the front seat.  The bus from Izu to Tokyo travels like a benevolent spirit - a kind word made manifest.  It moves as gently as a canoe adrift on an empty lake.  When it stops, and it does from time to time, travelers step off the road and stretch their legs while children sail rocks into quiet canyons.

There's room in my theory of forms for meditations on the passage of time, but I like movies that elide my worries with a man reclining, wordless, at a village station.  I like movies with cars and motorcycles, movies with cameras that float right behind.  The driver promises to bring some music back from Tokyo for a teenager who flags him down near the pass.  "With just one record," he tells a stranger, "all the village girls can have a good time.  There's no other entertainment up here on the mountains."

It is remarkably kind for a movie about a changing world, and very beautiful.  "Kind and handsome," says the driver's outspoken companion, between smoke rings and sips from a flask.  "No wonder the girls on the back roads are crazy about you."