Kurosawa is one of the most (if not THE most) prolific directors in the history of cinema. He made 30 films over the course of his 50 year career, the majority of which are regarded as classics of the medium. Although he is probably best known for his samurai films (Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Throne Of Blood, etc.), Kurosawa moved between numerous genres throughout his career. Given my natural predilection toward gangster films and film noir, I was eager to check out Stray Dog and Drunken Angel, a pair of films he made back to back at the height of the American occupation of his home country following World War II.
Despite some superficial similarities to American crime films of the 30's and 40's (mostly the snappy dialogue, although I'm sure most of the American slang was added in by whoever created the subtitles track), Kurosawa's films distinguish themselves with their highly personal characterization and their unique, winding plots. Drunken Angel is the story of an altruistic, alcoholic doctor (Takashi Shimura) attempting to save the life of a young yakuza (Toshiro Mifune) who is dying of tuberculosis. Stray Dog features a young police detective (Mifune again) who must track his stolen pistol through the criminal underground with the help of a veteran officer (Shimura again)
There was a great deal that surprised me when watching these two films, misconceptions I'd had about both the filmmakers and Japan itself. Given the way it's portrayed from a Western perspective (especially the way it was thought of after the war), it's easy to imagine Japan as a rigid, repressed nation of overly serious, honor-bound men and servile, nearly mute women. Kurosawa takes us on a tour of seedy back alleys and swinging jazz clubs filled with smart-mouth molls and jocular, care-free young gangsters. Even the atmosphere of the homelife of Takashi Shimura's police dectective in Stray Dog is more akin to the suburbs of 1950's America than anything else.
Kurosawa plays both sides of this argument in these films, criticizing both the outdated feudalistic lifestyle of old Japan (partially because American censorship at the time was interested in downplaying the more radical aspects of Japanese society) as well as the decadence and superficiality of Western culture. Although old codes of honor lead to the downfall of Mifune's young yakuza in Drunken Angel, his sharp suits and brash drunkeness carry just as much blame. Even the settings and locations chime in on this point. Drunken Angel is set in a squalid corner of the city along a massively polluted river, mirroring the fatal disease present in Mifune's lungs as well as the city itself. Stray Dog is set during a massive heatwave, which characterizes the oppressive, inescapable nature of a society that cannot be overcome by a single man, no matter how hard he tries.
I was also deeply impressed by the performances of both Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura in these films. Kurosawa and Mifune would eventually become each other's Scorsese and DeNiro and then some, with this pair of films being the first in a series of 16 that the would make together. Although not the international star that Mifune would become, Shimura played parts in 21 of Kurosawa's 30 films. Right from the start, the two actors create very different portraits of a relationship that would define many of Kurosawa's films: the master/student dynamic. Stray Dog features the more typical relationship of an older officer mentoring a younger one, but inverts the expected personality types of the two character, with Mifune's young detective being a driven, by-the-book stickler (attributed to the characters military background) and Shimura's veteran cop being a more laid back, adaptable maverick. Mifune's starring roles in Kurosawa's later samurai films often cast him as the brash rogue so it was interesting to see a younger version of him as a more straight-laced character. Drunken Angel features a more unconventional relationship between the two, with Shimura playing a bumbling, ill-tempered, but ultimately well-meaning mentor to Mifune's more traditional hard-headed, violent yakuza. They spend much of the film despising each other while still not able to cut ties between themselves. And while the ending of Drunken Angel is more tragic than that of Stray Dog, the former offers a more honest reflection of the shifting social traditions of Japan at the time (apparently Kurosawa was forced to cut an even bleaker ending from the film, which would have probably reflected this to an even greater degree).
Both of these films are available thanks to the folks over at The Criterion Collection if you'd like to check them out. I'd have a tough time recommending one over the other, but I will say that the Drunken Angel disc has a great half hour feature regarding the censorship imposed on Kurosawa's post-war films by the American censorship bureau in Japan. It's an interesting look at a uniquely specific time in American and Japanese history and it adds a lot of depth to the viewing experience of these two films.
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