Themes: Redemption, Doctors and Patients, Alcoholism
Main Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Reisaburo Yamamoto, Chieko Nakakita
Release Year: 1948
Country: JP
Run Time: 108 minutes
Plot
Originally titled Yoidore tenshi, Drunken Angel was director Akira Kurosawa's first "auteur" project. "I finally discovered myself," he explained later. "It was my picture: I was doing it and no one else." Takashi Shimura plays an alcoholic doctor, running a fleabitten clinic in the slums of Tokyo. Shimura tries to pull himself together long enough to save the life of young hoodlum Toshiro Mifune. The doctor feels that, by saving Mifune, he is retrieving a portion of his own lost youth and idealism. Kurosawa later observed that he had trouble corraling Tohsiro Mifune's improvisational instincts, but that "I did not want to smother that vitality." The end result in Drunken Angel is a supremely satisfying blend of Mifune's rapid-fire excesses and Kurosawa's even-handed control. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
The breakthrough film for both Kurosawa and key collaborator and alter ego Mifune, it was heralded by Japanese critics as the work of a cinematic master. The story was originally to have centered around the heroic, alcoholic doctor (Takashi Shimura), who runs a clinic for the indigent on the outskirts of a Tokyo slum neighborhood, but Mifune made such a powerful impression on the director that he expanded his role, that of a tubercular gangster, shifting the film's focus to the relationship between them. The doctor sees something of himself in the hard-drinking, self-destructive yakuza, and tries to get him to reform. The young Mifune is forceful and charismatic; even just leaning against a wall he exudes energy. His delirious swing dancing in an American-style club is alone worth the price of admission. Like much of the semi-documentary material shot against the backdrop of the city, to Kurosawa, it's evidence of the depravity of Japan, now occupied by American troops, with native traditions and customs fallen by the wayside. Similarly, the director returns to a shot of a disease-ridden sump outside the doctor's office, like the gangster's tuberculosis, a metaphor for the condition of the defeated country. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
It stars Takashi Shimura as an alcoholic doctor in postwar Japan who treats a young, small-time hood named Matsunaga (Toshirō Mifune, in his first role working with Kurosawa), after a gunfight with a rival syndicate. The doctor diagnoses the young gangster with tuberculosis, and convinces him to begin treatment for it. The two enjoy an uneasy friendship until the gangster's former boss is released from prison and seeks to take his gang over once again. The sick young man then stops following the doctor's advice, slips back into old habits and threatens to kill him, while his life is further endangered by his gangster lifestyle.
Kurosawa considered the film to be the first that he was able to direct without interference from government. The film showed Japanese audiences the seamy underworld (Yakuza) of Japanese society for the first time. It was also unusual because the star was an anti-hero. Toshirō Mifune's experience in the Japanese army was so recent that he looked the role of a man emaciated from tuberculosis. Although Mifune would go on to become Kurosawa's most popular star, and one of Japan's iconic leading men in film, it was Takashi Shimura who gave Kurosawa a wide range of dramatic performances for films such as Ikiru, Rashomon, and Seven Samurai.
In Drunken Angel, the doctor plays an unsympathetic character to balance the audience's natural affection for doctors against its natural distrust of underworld gangsters. For the film to work the audience must sympathize with the gangster caught in a struggle between his negative lifestyle and his own physical health, which was something new and altogether different for citizens of wartime Japan. At close of the film, Kurosawa blends together the action of a gangster film with the struggle of the individual to break free of his destructive lifestyle. As he was forced to do on previous occasions, Matsunaga must flee — this time from a fight when his progressive illness overcomes him. In his attempt to flee both he and his foe are covered in white paint as they struggle on the floor of an apartment hallway. Matsunaga breaks free but receives a fatal wound just as he bursts through a doorway that symbolizes his escape from his gangster life. Kurosawa uses both dramatic technique from Mifune with new camera angles and musical scoring to highlight the end of Matsunaga's struggle. The film's denouement shows the doctor refusing to allow himself to mourn the death of his patient.
Censorship issues in Drunken Angel are covered extensively in the supplemental documentary by Danish film scholar Lars-Martin Sorensen, entitled Kurosawa and the Censors, available on The Criterion Collection DVD release of the film.[1] Produced and released during the American occupation in Japan, the Drunken Angel screenplay had to comply with a censorship board issued by the U.S. government. The board did not allow criticism of the occupation to be shown in Japanese films at that time.
Kurosawa slipped several references to the occupation, all of them negative, past the censors. The opening scene of the film features unlicensed prostitutes known as "pan pan" girls, who catered to American soldiers. The gangsters and their girlfriends all wear Westernized clothing and hairstyles. Kurosawa was not allowed to show a burned-out building in his black-market slum set,[2] but he did heavily feature the poisonous bog at the center of the district. English-language signage was also not allowed, but the markets on set have several examples of English usage on their signs. The dance scene in the nightclub features an original composition ("Jungle Boogie", sung by Shizuko Kasagi) with lyrics by Kurosawa, satirizing American jazz music.[3] The censorship board was unable to catch these breaches due to overwork and understaffing.[4]
While looking for an actor to play Matsunaga, Kurosawa was told by one of the casting directors about Mifune, who was auditioning for another movie where he had to play an angry character. Kurosawa watched Mifune do this audition, and Kurosawa was so amazed by Mifune's audition he immediately cast him as Matsunaga.
