Walk Cheerfully is a 1930 film directed by Yasujiro Ozu.
Kenji, aka Ken the Knife, is a minor-league hoodlum. Along with his moll Chieko and his sidekick Senko, Kenji, who is part of a gang, commits various low-level robberies and cons. One day, while out and about with Senko, Kenji sees a lovely young woman named Yasue and is instantly smitten.
Yasue is a secretary to a lecherous boss who would like to get her into bed. Chieko, as it happens, is Yasue's coworker in the office, and resents Yasue for attracting Kenji's attention. She eventually tells Yasue exactly who Kenji is and what he does. Yasue dumps him, refusing to be his new moll, and Kenji vows to go straight. A bitter Chieko then decides to take some revenge.
Tropes:
- Action Prologue: Starts off with an action scene in which an angry mob is chasing a man through some warehouses by the docks. It's Senko, who has stolen a man's wallet.
- Bad Guys Play Pool: Kenji's gang hangs out in a pool hall, because obviously even a small-time yakuza gang can't hang out at the library.
- Betty and Veronica: Kenji's love interests are diametrically opposed. Yasue is sweet and gentle, wears a kimono, and won't date him anymore when she finds out he's a criminal. Chieko is his partner in crime, she wears Western dresses and smokes, and she's obviously willing to have sex.
- The Con: Kenji pulls a couple. In one, he pretends to be a helpful passer-by who grabs Senko the pickpocket and suggests the angry mob search Senko—after Kenji has pocketed the wallet. In another, Chieko is the Honey Pot who lures their victim into a vulnerable place so they can rob him.
- Dramatic Irony: Yasue complains about all the petty backstabbing at work, telling Kenji that "Both the men and women at my job act like hoodlums!". She does not know that her co-worker Chieko is a gangster's moll and part-time hoodlum herself, and that Kenji is an actual hoodlum.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: One of many films Ozu made in his earlier career that don't look at all like his later work. After the war Ozu made the movies he is famous for, which had a distinctive style: violating the 180-degree rule, cameras placed three feet off the ground, and cameras that never moved, with themes revolving around family life and parent-child relationships. Walk Cheerfully on the other hand is about a gangster trying to go straight, filled with tracking shots and zooms and gangsters with leggy girlfriends. To make this an American film would only have required changing the title cards.
- Empathy Doll Shot: Kenji and Senko are tooling around in their car when they narrowly avoid hitting Yasue's sister. There's a closeup of the sister's doll, lying shattered in the street. It's a strange moment, because nothing overtly bad happens to Yasue's family then or later, but it's suggestive that the Happy Ending may not be as happy as it seems.
- Fat Best Friend: Senko the sidekick is dramatically shorter and chubbier, and more bubbly and upbeat, than tall, handsome, serious Kenji.
- Grand Staircase Entrance: A very silly scene has the boss of Kenji's yakuza gang show up on the stairs of the pool hall, smoking a cigarette in a long-stemmed holder, smiling broadly, and holding a Mister Muffykins dog. What's even weirder is that after that grand staircase entrance, the gang boss is never seen again.
- I Will Wait for You: Yasue says this almost word-for-word (in Japanese, anyway) when Kenji is being arrested at the end. Apparently whatever he was being arrested for wasn't all that serious, since it was only "several months later" that he was released.
- P.O.V. Cam: Used for a Bait-and-Switch gag. A title card announces that Kenji has gotten a job. There is a POV shot of the driver of a car—but it's not Kenji driving the car, it's Senko. Senko pulls up to a building where Kenji is working as a window-washer.
- Secret Test of Character: Accidentally. Yasue has found out where Kenji works washing windows. She walks over to the building—and overhears Kenji having a conversation with Chieko and Genji. They are trying to talk Kenji on leaving the straight world behind and joining them in some sort of big job. Yasue turns in disgust, and that's when she hears Kenji angrily reject them.
- Shout-Out
- Mr. Ono, Yasue's boss, has a poster for Our Dancing Daughters in his office.
- In the gangster's hangout they have a poster showing Clara Bow dressed up as a boxer (for a film called Rough House Rosie which is now lost).
- Title Drop: When Kenji is being arrested at the end, Yasue urges him not to despair, saying "Go on now, walk cheerfully."
- Yakuza: They're a Japanese crime gang, so they count, although they seem to engage mostly in small-scale stuff like petty theft. On the other hand Kenji is called "Ken the Knife" so the gang must indulge in some more serious crimes.
