While taking a train trip, the Chaplinesque Tora-San comes to the aid of suicidal businessman Akira Emoto. When the businessman expresses a desire to visit Vienna, Tora-San obligingly goes along with him. Tora-San doesn’t enjoy the Austrian city as much as he’d expected, but his visit is brightened by his romance with tour guide Keiko Takeshita. Alas, Tora-San is once more left alone at film’s end, though there’s always the prospect of new adventures just around the next corner.
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I heard from a Japanese collegue that this is the movie you get asked about if you talk to people about living in Vienna as a Japanese person.
As someone who lives there too, I thought I might get a kick out of watching this 30 year old comedy movie as a non-Japanese person.
It’s a well known fact that comedy translates well over a long time and across strong cultural barries.
Nonetheless, I gotta say, it got a few laughs out of me here and there, but I have no idea if those were the intentionally funny parts. It surprised me though, for a comedy movie there were an unusual amount of suicidal and depressed people in it. Also, I expected this movie to be more pro-Vienna, but it seems like every single character just wanted to leave this supposed hellhole as fast as possible.
In the end, I am just glad that I actually convinced 2 other people to watch this with me. Although the way this movie treats Vienna is a bit disappointing overall, I had a good time, can’t say if it’s because of the movie though, or because of the riffs.