AKIRA KUROSAWA CENTENARY

AKIRA KUROSAWA

1910 - 1998

YOIDORI TENSHI/Drunken Angel (1948)

In the post war slums of Tokyo a young gangster (Toshiro Mifune) visits an alcoholic doctor (Takashi Shimura) to have a bullet removed from his hand. The doctor also diagnoses tuberculosis and the gangster reacts violently and leaves. The doctor goes to see the gangster and tries to persuade him to get an X-Ray but again the meeting ends in an assault on the doctor. This is the basic premise for Kurosawa's film and as this brief outline suggests it is mainly a two-hander for the two great Japanese actors. The vivid depiction of the slums (we are in the world of IKIRU here) with children drinking from lakes of rotting water where the city's waste has been tipped and disease and crime running rampant is the perfect setting for this tale of redemption. From Western eyes conditioned by Hollywood cliche viewers tend to expect that the main focus of this tale is Mifune's young gangster and we are, perhaps, deliberately led down that path by Kurosawa. The doctor is living with the girlfriend of a gang leader who is due to be released from jail. Will Mifune protect them ? Well the action takes all the expected turns but the motivations and results are not at all what we would expect. Mifune's character is a selfish son-of-a-bitch who can see no further than his own reputation and there is no softening of his personality. In Hollywood he would have discovered gratitude and humility and gone out in a redeeming blaze of glory but for Kurosawa the man is a waste of human potential and his end is ineffectual, squalid and motivated not by any noble sacrifice but by pride. Kurosawa compares him to a young school girl who suffers from the same disease and who listens to the doctor. While Kurosawa never hits us over the head with the "message" the characters would seem to me to stand for the attitudes of post-war Japan, with Mifune as the old self destructive ways and the schoolgirl (who we only see twice) as the way forward. The polluted slum is post-Hiroshima Japan. On the more personal level the redemption that we first expect to be Mifune's is actually that of the doctor - Kurosawa tells us this in the title. The final seen has a feeling of optimism that reminded me strongly of Sjoberg's TORMENT. Rating ****

Curiously, I watched this on the same day as I viewed WHISTLE AND I'LL COME TO YOU in which a man is pursued along a beach by a strange ghostly figure. In DRUNKEN ANGEL, Mifune dreams that he finds his own coffin on a beach and is pursued along the beach by his own corpse. I think they call it synchronicity!

MOVIE SNAPSHOTS No3

Dislocation, dislocation, dislocation!

When I picked my 10 favourites recently I said how difficult it was to pick a favourite film by the great Akira Kurosawa. I quite surprised my self when I picked AKAHIGE/Red Beard(1965) as one of my two favourites from the great man. RED BEARD was a huge hit in Japan and rightly hailed as a masterpiece but fared less well in Europe and America where critics (except for the real Kurosawa afficinados) thought that the plot was a bit "soapy" - well if it is then Kurosawa transcends the material as surely as critic's darling (and I mean no disrespect to him) Douglas Sirk ever did. RED BEARD is a long film but for me is totally gripping from beginning to end.

It is in turn, moving, exciting and, in one memorable scene, scarey as hell. The plot tells of a young doctor in 18th Century Japan who goes to work at a public clinic run by an unconventional doctor (think HOUSE and you're still miles off target) with a reputation for being awkward. The film has many outstanding moments that I could have picked as my movie snapshot including the memorable scene where Toshiro Mifune as the doctor is threatened by a gang of pimps and he proceeds to dislocate their limbs in a fight scene as exciting as any sword fight that Kurosawa ever filmed. But my choice is of a scene very early in the film when the young intern is first taken to meet Mifune. He has heard of his reputation and is very nervous. Another intern takes him to Mifune's office and slides to one side the partition. Unexpectedly, because of the build up, Mifune is kneeling with his back to the door. The two younger men kneel in the Japanese manner and the introduction is made. Mifune still does not turn. The moment is held, maybe for only a few seconds but we, like the newcomer feel it is an eternity. Suddenly Mifune turns and stares at the younger me and again Kurosawa holds the moment for full effect. And what an effect it is! Immeadiatley we, the viewer, become that young doctor facing the scrutiny of our fearsome new boss. This small sequence is a wonderful example of both Kurosawa's power as a director - the suspenseful buildup, the seeming anti-climax and then the climax that draws the audience into the scene - knowing just how long to hold each shot - and of Mifune's fantastic presence as an actor. In that glaring look we know everything we need to know about the character at this point in the film. He has authority, is unconventional, is a bit scarey but is so charismatic that we are drawn to him and want to know more. Brilliant. Luckily the very moment is captured in a still.