DRUNKEN ANGEL Movie Review

Yoidore Tenshi

This superb 1948 Kurosawa picture was seen by much of the world only after Rashomon took the cinema world by storm two years later. It's the story of a swaggering gangster (played wonderfully by the 28-year-old Toshiro Mifune) who visits a doctor (Ikiru's Takashi Shimura) to have a bullet removed, only to be informed that he has tuberculosis. Uninterested in this news, the gangster not only refuses treatment from the alcoholic doctor, he also slaps him around a bit in the bargain. Outraged by the gangster's refusal to deal with any of the sad truths of his life, yet well aware that he is not without flaws himself, the doctor engages the gangster in a duel of wills that results in a surprising—though violent—resolution. This story of a wounded man and his would-be healer was also seen by many in post-war Japan as an allegory of a wounded nation; it won Japan's highest film prize, the Kinema Jumpo ("Best One") Award, Japan's equivalent of the Oscar. Though it wasn't his first film as a director, many feel that Drunken Angel is the first major work of Kurosawa's career. Just as importantly, it marks the first collaboration between Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune—a partnership that would change the face of world cinema for all time.

NEXT STOP … Stray Dog, Ikiru, Red Beard

1948 108m/B JP Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Choko lida; D:Akira Kurosawa; W:Keinosuke Uegusa; C: Takeo Ito; M: Fumio Hayasaka. VHS DVT, MRV