• 酔いどれの天使 (Drunken Angel)

11/22/20 (Sun)

One of Kurosawa’s first postwar flicks and his first film with Mifune Toshiro. It amounts to a rather heavy-handed look at yakuza culture as well as the race for riches that threatens to undermine the societal ties that bind. It featured exaggerated performances by both leads, who do lots of declaiming in place of normal speech. There is nothing natural in Shimura Takashi’s gruff language or treatment of others, while Mifune is charismatic but over-the-top in trying to be the tough gangster, putting on a show even in intimate moments. It’s hard to believe in either of these guys.

The story itself is interesting. Dr. Sanada (Shimura) is visited by local gang leader Matsunaga (Mifune), who asks him to remove what he describes as a nail. That turns out to be a bullet. The doctor then discovers that Matsunaga is suffering from tuberculosis. Matsunaga doesn’t want to admit weakness and refuses to follow the treatment. Sanada realizes that the problem is beyond a sick body and more a sick soul (“We all have fears, we’re human. But you’re too ashamed to admit it. And you confuse that with courage”). He makes it his mission to cure Matsunaga of both.

Meanwhile, Matsunaga’s former boss Okada (Yamamoto Reisaburo) has gotten out of prison and seeks to make his comeback. Matsunaga shows deference to his old friend, who repays this by dragging the young man out drinking and causing him to ignore his treatment. Matsunaga learns eventually he is being set up for betrayal in a deal between his current boss and Okada. Matsunaga’s girlfriend also dumps him as he gets sicker, shifting to the more promising Okada. At the same time, Okada is threatening to kill the doctor for hiding a former girlfriend. Matsunaga decides to solve the problem once and for all.

The doctor mocks his profession for needing patients but then going around trying to cure them; the same can be said about his relationship with the gangster Matsunaga, who he’s made a mission of returning to good health. Matsunaga needs to be cured physically and spiritually, which the doctor tries to accomplish by sharply criticizing the man’s lifestyle, telling him that “martyrdom is out of style”. Each is the other’s drunken angel. The doctor tells the gangster, “Your filthy minds always imagine angels come looking like dance hall girls, but they’re actually like me.”

Many reviewers see this as a veiled criticism of the Occupation, but that seems a bogus way of avoiding Japan’s own responsibility for its woes. The postwar deprivation is clear, and a remarkable nightclub scene does show the nation’s Westernizing ways. A rotten swamp at the center of town is a physical symbol of the rotting society. Still, the film seems more like a critique of the old Japanese ways (such as the feudalistic yakuza structure) and outdated notions of honor and obligation, which didn’t do Japan much good in the prewar years either. (As the doctor observes, “The Japanese love to sacrifice themselves for stupid things.”) The ending was supposedly made more positive at the behest of the Occupation censors, but it feels right when the doctor goes off to celebrate with a cured student. It’s all about human kindness, not strict societal rules.

There’s a fantastic knife duel toward the end as Matsunaga and Okada slip and slide on overturned paint, inspired presumably by the Bunraku/Kabuki piece The Oil-Hell Murder (女殺油地獄). The filming of the decaying town is extremely effective. There’s a good movie in here somewhere if Kurosawa hadn’t been so eager to hammer his theme home.