Leofwine_draca DRUNKEN ANGEL sees the master of Japanese cinema, Akira Kurosawa, on solid form in the simplistic tale of the developing friendship between an alcoholic doctor and a dying gangster who comes to him for help. While the story is set very noticeably in a poor, run-down, post-WW2 Japan, the story is one which brims with life and vitality, which is somewhat ironic given the subject matter.The calibre of the acting is second to none which is no surprise for fans of the director. Takashi Shimura underpins the whole thing as the titular character, a stressed-out doctor battling the bottle as well as the problems of his various associates and patients, but it's Toshiro Mifune who gives the stand-out turn here. This was the star's first collaboration with Kurosawa and it comes as no surprise that the pair would go on to re-team many times in the future. Mifune's performance as the small-fry gangster, addicted to drinking and partying and yet suffering from the effects of tuberculosis, is one of his greats.Kurosawa's cinematography is another winner here, and there are some fine moments of tension including a great, extended fight scene at the climax. My favourite moment is a bizarre dream sequence in which Mifune is chased along a beach by a corpse only to find himself trapped in a slow motion run. It's one of the few times that the director went for outright horror (along with THRONE OF BLOOD) and it makes me wish he had made an all-out horror film at least once in his career.

Gray_Balloon_Bob This is my third (proper) viewing of Kurosawa, and although each previous experience left enough of an impression on me to anticipate the next one, and although almost a year later images of The Hidden Fortress (1958) are still burned in my mind and playing like a permanent slideshow, only now something has really clicked with me. Like the best music albums that slowly unfurl their layers after repeated listening, my relationship with Kurosawa has now progressed beyond admiration to borderline love. Even Rashomon (1950) took a while to settle in my mind before I could fully comprehend exactly what it was doing and why I couldn't leave the thought of it alone. Kurosawa had such a masterful command of film that each and every moment feels alive, and not just kinetic but thoughtful. A scene here that I immediately recall is one in the dance hall which much of the action revolves around, in which the camera is tightly focused on a corridor, and we see our resident gangster Matsunaga (Toshiro Mifune) drunkenly stumble in, barely supported by two cronies, and then quickly pulled off frame. The camera waits for the rest of the flood of people to issue in, before pulling back along the corridor and stopping at a table of women, who talk of Matsunaga and his company, who are just off-screen. Just describing this scene does little much to illustrate its importance, but it significantly raises the drama and captures the chaos of the environment in a single interesting shot: our character has been warned not to drink and has been actively resisting the temptation, his being dragged off screen in pathetic stupor helps only adds to his increasing helplessness that we the audience share with him and the choice to suddenly stop on this group of women cleverly allows a piece of exposition to be delivered about a character in the form of relished gossip without artificially slowing the action down. Maybe what makes Kurosawa more readily accessible, on a superficial level at least, is how intertwined he seems to be with Western culture. Whether the film is borrowing elements from the West, or what you're seeing is the original prototype that was taken and remade in Westernized form, ala Seven Samurai, it's hard to escape the meeting of cultures in his work. Not that you'd want to. Here, the film takes place in a more immediate Post-WWII setting, and so the streets and its inhabitants are infused with a foreign presence; some signs are English, the gangsters dress and posture like Americans, and the malaise of recent war is still in the air, relayed to us through the cranky and cynical Doctor who really, it appears, just wants to help and hearten his fellow people. There sits a wide stagnant pool outside his office that Kurosawa's camera frequently returns to, and the Doctor at one point tries to warn off a group of children gathered around it, his aged, grumpy presence masking the fact, to the children at least, that he doesn't have to warn them of the typhoid they'll get for hanging around such places. This compassionate man is played impeccably by Takashi Shimura, who I've learned to be a Kurosawa regular. He is both cantankerous and quietly sensitive. He struggles with alcoholism but is entirely dedicated to his job. Shimura has this wonderful lower lip which works to great comic effect and can earn our sympathy easily; sometimes he looks so indignant at the happenings of the world, others he blusters and bumbles and drags it across the top of a glass loaded with alcohol. This Doctor is visited one night by an injured man, Toshiro Mifune, who it turns out is a gangster with a threatening case of TB, and an odd bond is solidified between them that comes not so much from friendship as it does just their yearning need to exist; the Doctor needs to help his patient and the patient knows, despite all his posturing, the he needs the Doctor. Mifune is like lightning here, striking at every turn and always carrying some threat of destruction. But that destruction isn't so much outward violence as it is him slowly killing himself. Much of the pathos in the film comes from seeing him ever so slowly and consistently deteriorate, until it seems like there is hardly anything left of him. Toward the end of the film, when Matsunaga realises he has been stripped of all power and is effectively waiting for his own grave to be filled, he has so little strength his body can barely take the realisation; his hanging limbs and ghoulish frozen face seem to call back to the Silent era of bold theatrical movement, and in fact in the pale desperation of his face I was reminded of Cesare from The Cabinet of Dr Cagliari. This film runs at little over 95 minutes and Kurosawa keeps the relatively simple story alive in every frame, and is filled with wonderful touches. In the first half of the film, a street musician regularly plays a mournful piece on his guitar at night, the same rhythm and the same place each time, and the world feels repeated and cyclical. When a recently released Gangster returns from prison, he asks for the guitar the musician has and plays his own piece; not just hearkening his own arrival to the world but announcing the film's shift into the second half and the darker place it is taking us and its characters. This includes a haunting fever dream of two Mifunes and final confrontation that is reckless and intense and pathetic and in its spontaneity feels proto-Godard (without the pretension). This is Kurosawa's eighth film but what he considered his first, and it is clear that he has taken away the experience from those seven previous features and distilled it into something entirely his own; a clear indication of all the masterpieces to come.

Dustin Dye "Drunken Angel" is one of dozens of collaborations between Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura, and one of many which was directed by Akira Kurosawa. The two actors have played nearly every possible, even contradictory, dynamic, from sempai-kohai (senior-junior) in "Stray Dog" and "Seven Samurai," to somewhat antagonistic roles in "Drunken Angel."Dr. Sanada (Shimura) is the titular drunken angel. He is a competent doctor, despite being an alcoholic, who operates a clinic in a shabby Tokyo neighborhood, still in shambles in the aftermath of World War II. (The American Occupation forces censored films at the time, and banned the showing of bombed-out ruins. Nevertheless, Kurosawa succeeded in providing a sense of the seediness and desolation of post-war Tokyo.) Dr. Sanada is rough around the edges, screaming at children not to play in the stagnant cesspit in the neighborhood and admonishing passers-by for their unhealthy habits. But we see that he clearly cares about his patients in his treatment toward a 17-year-old schoolgirl who is recovering from tuberculosis.The story begins when a two-bit yakuza gangster, Matsunaga (Mifune), finds his way to Dr. Sanada's clinic after a gun fight. While treating Matsunaga, Dr. Sanada suspects the yakuza has tuberculosis. Dr. Sanada insists he can cure Matsunaga, but it will take strict discipline on the latter's part.Mifune fits the role of the down-and-out gangster perfectly. The young actor's face is intensely brooding, but sallow (the result of hardships during the war). Mifune was sometimes accused of overacting by Western critics who only knew his work through "Seven Samurai" and "Yojimbo." His performance here provides a stark contrast to the comical, drunken buffoon he played in "Seven Samurai." Mifune's is a fully realized character. Like many career lowlifes, his commitment to changing his ways, even in the face of death, is wishy-washy. The audience can see that he's not all bad, and we hope he can change his ways before it's too late.Watching "Drunken Angel," I was reminded of another Kurosawa-Shimura collaboration, Ikiru, which was also about a man facing imminent death. But in Ikiru, Shimura's character makes drastic changes to give meaning to his thus-far wasted life. In "Drunken Angel," Mifune's character denies his illness and resists change.The soundtrack was especially notable. Rather than having a score, most of the music is ambient, coming from some unseen source, such as a street performer playing the same tune on a Spanish guitar over and over, or a crackly waltz booming over a loud speaker giving ironic contrast to a dramatic scene. One particularly haunting moment was when the dreaded Okada turns up after being released from prison, takes the guitar from the street performer, and plays a suitably ominous tune.Like many Kurosawa films, "Drunken Angel" is somewhat preachy, and the dialogue can be ham-handed at times, particularly when the characters make statements that are obvious to the viewer.While "Drunken Angel" doesn't have the epic scope of Kurosawa's later samurai films, it is still a highly watchable, minor classic.

Tim Kidner Considered by many to be Kurosawa's first film (actually his eighth) of real note, I watched it as part of the newly released BFI Kurosawa Crime Collection.I found it more accessible and initially enjoyable than his later and more well known samurai classics, probably because it could have been directed by Howard Hawkes or any number of leading crime flick directors of the period. With Toshiro Mifune (in his first of many Kurosawa roles) dressed in sharp suits and slicked back hair, he looks every part a Chicago gangster. Jazz bands play in bars, with western style dancing.Takeshi Shimura (another Kurosawa regular) plays the drunk doc, who despairs at the slums around him and the typhoid-infested pond that everything is dumped into that is on his doorstep. He takes a bullet from the younger man and then treats his TB. As both men lurch unsteadily from their respective curses (Mifune soon looking very haggard and unwell) and the two men form an uneasy alliance. Then the yakuza's plot is taken away from him, due to his ailing health.Drunken Angel displays not only a sharp snapshot on post-war Japan and western influences but nuanced and fine performances and a great story of two very different men, who find maybe that the differences aren't so great, after all.