Walk Cheerfully (1930)

IMDb plot summary: A small-time hood wants to go straight for a good girl but finds that starting over isn't as simple as it sounds.

Directed by Yasujirô Ozu. Starring Minoru Takada, Hiroko Kawasaki, and Satoko Date.

Walk Cheerfully is the second of two silent films I watched recently by Yasujiro Ozu, and, weirdly, they both end with the main character making the same exact noble sacrifice of turning himself in to the police rather than running from them so that he can hopefully continue a normal life once he's released and his slate is wiped clean. In fact, watching the two back to back makes it almost impossible to talk about this one without comparing it to the other, which I did like more. This one focuses much more on  the backstory of the young man and his love story with the woman. We see him working for a long time to try to escape his life of crime so that he can be worthy of her, only to find himself caught up in another illegal scheme at the end. Because of that, even though the two films are very similar in actual plot details, the feeling of them is different. Here, his turning himself in does feel like a cleansing of not only his immediate crime, but his entire past. This also feels much more like a straightforward crime story, which is less my genre, but Ozu does still manage to make it feel intimate and personal by building the relationships between the group and contrasting them with the main character's relationship with his girlfriend. While I loved That Night's Wife, I only like this one. It brings to mind a little bit the experience of watching Serpico and Prince of the City by Sidney Lumet back to back, almost like watching a director realize he hadn't completed the film he wanted and try again. Of these two, I think Walk Cheerfully is the lesser, but it's still a decent film. 

How it entered my Flickchart:

🎥 Walk Cheerfully (1930)

📊 Ranked #1941/4025 on my Flickchart

🎯 Flickscore™: 52

beat Meet John Doe (#2009 → #2018)

lost to Muriel's Wedding (#1003 → #1004)

lost to Joker (#1506 → #1491)

lost to The Letter (#1757 → #1347)

lost to Eyes Wide Shut (#1883 → #1828)

beat The Sea Gull (#1946 → #1944)

beat Cast Away (#1914 → #1945)

beat Away We Go (#1898 → #1963)

lost to Imitation of Life (#1890 → #1806)

lost to Aladdin (#1894 → #1885)

lost to The Mummy (#1896 → #1818)

beat The Prestige (#1897 → #1924)