Criterion Sunday 413: 醉いどれ天使 Yoidore Tenshi (Drunken Angel, 1948)

Not long before Kurosawa made his international breakthrough Rashomon came this first film with actor Toshiro Mifune. It’s a post-war genre film, in which Mifune plays Matsunaga, a young, rakish gangster who seems to be doing well for himself in this amoral world, but whose boss Okada (Reisaburo Yamamoto) comes back into the picture after a stretch in jail, complicating things already made complicated by an illness. The titular character is the doctor played by Takashi Shimura, an alcoholic but one who’s doing his best to help his patients, including Mifune’s gangster. A lot of this feels like a commentary on the period, a time of American occupation, with the bleak ruined landscapes and stagnant ponds of water which have accumulated amongst the twisted wreckage of the city providing its own drama (a feeling of brokenness that would be recaptured in later films dealing with this period, like Seijun Suzuki’s Gate of Flesh). But you also get the feeling that the feeling of societal breakdown, the anger that Mifune’s character uses to lash out at the doctor and the world, is part of the response to this post-war feeling, evoking a certain powerlessness, but if that’s the case, Kurosawa manages to find a small vestige of hope amongst the ruin.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Akira Kurosawa 黒澤明; Writers Kurosawa and Keinosuke Uegusa 植草圭之助; Cinematographer Takeo Ito 伊藤武夫; Starring Toshiro Mifune 三船敏郎, Takashi Shimura, 志村喬, Reisaburo Yamamoto 山本礼三郎, Michiyo Kogure 木暮実千代; Length 98 minutes.

Seen at home (DVD), Wellington, Saturday 3 April 2021.

Criterion Sunday 319: 悪い奴ほどよく眠る Warui Yatsu Hodo Yoku Nemuru (The Bad Sleep Well, 1960)

Toshiro Mifune gets a lot of recognition for his roles in Kurosawa’s samurai epics, but in some ways he’s even better in a business suit and tie — it seems to be a milieu that all the actors familiar from samurai films slip into with great ease (Masayuki Mori here plays the big boss, Takashi Shimura his creepy co-conspirator, and Ko Nishimura a craven stooge). Unlike the period samurai films, however, this contemporary tale of corporate double-dealings pointedly lacks any kind of honour. It’s a revenge story, and apparently loosely based on Hamlet, though it seems to invert just about everything in that particular tale. Mifune’s character is the one out for revenge (for the death of his father of course), and so you imagine the worst for his wife (Kyoko Kagawa) — who surely must be about to be driven mad at any moment — but Kurosawa and his co-writers visit the story’s punishments instead on its hapless salary men, hoping for a break by pleasing the boss. It’s all carefully controlled and framed, and though it runs long it never fails to be stylish in its widescreen black-and-white.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Akira Kurosawa 黒澤明; Writers Hideo Oguni 小国英雄, Eijiro Hisaita 久板栄二郎, Kurosawa, Ryuzo Kikushima 菊島隆三 and Shinobu Hashimoto 橋本忍; Cinematographer Yuzuru Aizawa 逢沢譲; Starring Toshiro Mifune 三船敏郎, Masayuki Mori 森雅之, Kyoko Kagawa 香川京子, Takashi Shimura 志村喬, Ko Nishimura 西村晃; Length 150 minutes.

Seen at home (BFI Player via Amazon streaming), London, Sunday 24 May 2020.

Criterion Sunday 310: 上意討ち 拝領妻始末 Joi-uchi: Hairyo Tsuma Shimatsu (Samurai Rebellion, 1967)

I’ve recently been watching quite a run of quiet little domestic dramas from the 1930s directed by Mikio Naruse, which I liked well enough, yet I feel a little conflicted I’m giving the best review now that I’m back on the rather more familiar cinematic terrain of the chanbara (samurai film) and jidaigeki (period drama, in this case the mid-18th century). That said, Masaki Kobayashi is one of the real ones in Japanese cinema; after all, he made the equally brilliant Harakiri (1962) and Kwaidan (1964). He’s possibly an even greater stylist in some ways than Kurosawa, whose mythos he’s obviously building on by using the same screenwriter as wrote Seven Samurai, and by casting Toshiro Mifune only a few years after Yojimbo and Sanjuro as Isaburo, the ageing vassal to a local clan warlord (daimyo). He’s also cast Tatsuya Nakadai as Isaburo’s closest compatriot, each of them competing to be the greatest swordsman in their territory — a detail set up in the opening scene that will, of course, come back into play at the end.

Kobayashi knows brilliantly how to frame and cut shots, and there’s an architectural sense of space amongst these formal indoor settings, with careful use of dollies and zooms to move around the rooms, until of course the walls of the house are removed to help aid the upcoming battle. All details point towards a final showdown, as the moral drama unfolds, in which Isaburo’s family become embroiled in a struggle over a woman — indeed, the Japanese title more straightforwardly frames the story as being one focused on a traded wife, a pawn in a struggle between clan chief and his vassal. While there’s no overt conflict until very near the end, the film methodically moves towards this outcome, ratcheting up tension with the aforementioned technical skills, not to mention a brace of fine performances, not least from Yoko Tsukasa as the traded wife Ichi, and Go Kato as Isaburo’s son Yogoro whose wife Ichi becomes.

CRITERION EXTRAS:

• Relatively sparse extras include a three-minute segment of a 1993 interview Kobayashi did with Masahiro Shinoda (who directed Double Suicide), in which he offers a few reflections on this film, notably that Mifune was not focused on it at all, somewhat coasting through the project, though of course still acting effortlessly well.
• The only other extra is the Japanese trailer, which cuts together most of the film, including the final confrontation.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Masaki Kobayashi 小林正樹; Writer Shinobu Hashimoto 橋本忍 (based on the novel 拝領妻始末 Hairyo Tsuma Shimatsu by Yasuhiko Takiguchi 滝口康彦); Cinematographer Kazuo Yamada 山田一夫; Starring Toshiro Mifune 三船敏郎, Go Kato 加藤剛, Yoko Tsukasa 司葉子, Tatsuya Nakadai 仲代達矢; Length 121 minutes.

Seen at home (DVD), London, Thursday 16 April 2020.

Criterion Sunday 280: 大菩薩峠 Daibosatsu Toge (The Sword of Doom, 1966)

There’s what feels like an almost unceasing parade of swordplay violence in this film, resulting in scores if not hundreds of piled-up casualties, largely of our antihero Ryunosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai), though Toshiro Mifune weighs in for one memorable scene that gives the otherwise unstoppably evil-doing Ryunosuke a moment of brief pause. It’s enough to make you think that maybe that’s what the film is doing: the title could be referring to Ryunosuke’s sword, after all, but perhaps by extension it’s all swords and “doom” is just the outcome of violent behaviour. The film is set near the end of the shogunate, so samurai are on the decline and this film enacts in a sense this final death rattle of lawless mercenary violence. It does this with some fantastically composed monochrome style, as Nakadai moves blankly (he has the unfeeling mien of a sociopath) towards both swords and doom, with nihilistic rigour.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Kihachi Okamoto 岡本喜八; Writer Shinobu Hashimoto 橋本忍 (based on the novel by Kaizan Nakazato 中里介山); Cinematographer Hiroshi Murai 村井博; Starring Tatsuya Nakadai 仲代達矢, Yuzo Kayama 加山雄三, Michiyo Aratama 新珠三千代, Toshiro Mifune 三船敏郎; Length 119 minutes.

Seen at home (Blu-ray), London, Friday 29 November 2019.

Criterion Sunday 239: The Lower Depths (1936/1957)

I am perhaps missing something, but Renoir somehow contrives to make this story of the poorest in society seem like another of his genteel comedies of etiquette and civility, a twirl through upper-class society mores but with shabbier clothes and fewer prospects. It certainly doesn’t feel like something based on a Russian source, but then perhaps in 1936 that’s not the kind of story that was needed. The poor and the rich are just part of a continuum perhaps, all on the same level, and certainly the Baron character moves swiftly and easily between the two. Still, not much seems particularly convincing, though Gabin remains a watchable screen presence in the lead role as a likeable thief.

A few decades later and Kurosawa’s take on Gorky’s slum-set drama really gets the sense of grinding poverty that eluded Renoir, I think. That said, by this point, Mifune’s scowling renegade character seems a little weary, barking at all the other characters in the way that hardly ingratiates him as a charismatic centre. No, instead this film is really about all the other flophouse inhabitants, each of whom has their various intersecting thing going on (and reminds me a little of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Hana). To be honest, none of it ever really held me, but Kurosawa has a way with the camera and the staging that remains impressive.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection

Les Bas-fonds (The Lower Depths, 1936)
Director Jean Renoir; Writers Yevgeni Zamyatin Евге́ний Замя́тин, Jacques Companéez, Renoir and Charles Spaak (based on the play На дне Na dne by Maxim Gorky Макси́м Го́рький); Cinematographer Fédote Bourgasoff Федор БУРГАСОВ; Starring Jean Gabin, Suzy Prim, Louis Jouvet; Length 95 minutes.

Seen at home (DVD), London, Monday 11 February 2019.

どん底 Donzoko (The Lower Depths, 1957)
Director Akira Kurosawa 黒澤明; Writers Hideo Oguni 小国 英雄 and Kurosawa (based on the play На дне Na dne by Maxim Gorky Макси́м Го́рький); Cinematographer Kazuo Yamasaki 山崎市雄; Starring Toshiro Mifune 三船 敏郎, Kyoko Kagawa 香川 京子, Isuzu Yamada 山田 五十鈴; Length 124 minutes.

Seen at home (DVD), London, Thursday 14 February 2019.

Criterion Sunday 233: 野良犬 Nora Inu (Stray Dog, 1949)

A fine crime procedural, which follows a young detective (Toshiro Mifune) who has his gun stolen from him in a moment of weariness on a tram, and spends the rest of the film tracking it down, learning along the way the serious consequences of such a breach of attention. It has a noirish hue, as Mifune goes deeper into the sleazy underworld, and throughout there’s a tangible sense of suffocating heat, characters constantly wiping the sweat from their faces, their clothes suffused with damp. It set up Kurosawa’s interest in refining pulpy generic storylines that he’d further pursue in subsequent films with Mifune and over his career.

CRITERION EXTRAS:

• As with many of the Kurosawa discs, it includes a short documentary about its making, part of a Japanese TV series called It Is Wonderful to Create. The format remains consistent: text-heavy and reliant on interviews, with original archival materials interspersed with the words of surviving collaborators. The art director who worked on the film is interviewed wearing a Guns N Roses t-shirt, so there’s that. The image of Mifune doing a little jig, as relayed by the (then) young co-star, is also amusing.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Akira Kurosawa 黒澤明; Writers Kurosawa and Ryuzo Kikushima 菊島隆三; Cinematographer Asakazu Nakai 中井朝一; Starring Toshiro Mifune 三船敏郎, Takashi Shimura 志村喬; Length 122 minutes.

Seen at a friend’s home (DVD), London, Sunday 28 October 2018 (and originally on VHS at the university library, Wellington, April 1998).

Criterion Sunday 190: 蜘蛛巣城 Kumonosu-jo (Throne of Blood, 1957)

The most striking aspect of this (very loose) adaptation of Shakespeare is the mist that swirls about the characters, especially at the start as they ride about, lost, in “Cobweb Forest”, and again at the end with its strange uncanny trees. The costume design, too, is richly detailed, as Kurosawa transposes the story to feudal Japan, with a number of competing warlords seeking to usurp one another’s power and thus Shakespeare’s story doesn’t seem out of place at all, even within Kurosawa’s own oeuvre. Toshiro Mifune has never been more expressive in his facial acting — perhaps too much so at times — and the persistent sense of imminent danger, as well as those atmospheric effects, remain the finest achievements of this adaptation.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Akira Kurosawa 黒澤明; Writers Shinobu Hashimoto 橋本忍, Ryuzo Kikushima 菊島隆三, Kurosawa and Hideo Oguni 小国英雄 (based on the play Macbeth by William Shakespeare); Cinematographer Asakazu Nakai 中井朝一; Starring Toshiro Mifune 三船敏郎, Isuzu Yamada 山田五十鈴, Takashi Shimura 志村喬; Length 110 minutes.

Seen at a friend’s home (DVD), London, Sunday 7 January 2018 (and years earlier on TV).

Criterion Sunday 159: 赤ひげ Akahige (Red Beard, 1965)

Undoubtedly one of Kurosawa’s stronger films, the central drama in Red Beard (named for Toshiro Mifune’s defining facial accoutrement, even if the film itself is in black-and-white) isn’t introduced with any big flourishes or self-aggrandising camerawork. The focus remains on the small events, inside a clinic where Mifune’s Dr Niide schools a cocky young intern (Yuzo Kayama as Dr Yasumoto) on what it means to be a compassionate doctor. Yasumoto’s journey towards caring about his fellow people is moved forward by a number of encounters with patients, which unfold slowly without any big setpieces (though Mifune dispatching a town of hooligans is the closest to that), just the riveting human drama of one man’s education. Fundamentally decent.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Akira Kurosawa 黒澤明; Writers Masato Ide 井手雅人, Ryuzo Kikushima 菊島隆三, Kurosawa and Hideo Oguni 小国英雄 (based on the collection of short stories 赤ひげ診療譚 Akahige shinryotan “The Tales of Dr Red Beard” by Shuguro Yamamoto 山本周五郎); Cinematographers Asakazu Nakai 中井朝一 and Takao Saito 斎藤孝雄; Starring Toshiro Mifune 三船敏郎, Yuzo Kayama 加山雄三; Length 185 minutes.

Seen at a friend’s home (DVD), London, Sunday 4 June 2017.

Criterion Sunday 138: 羅生門 Rashomon (1950)

Though it may be one of those films that’s always on a best-of list somewhere, and therefore has the sense of being a boring dusty old classic, thankfully it’s for many good reasons and none of them involve being bored. Whatever else, it must be one of the most influential movies ever, not least for its audacious structure, moving back and forward in time and presenting overlapping testimonies on a rape/murder, each of which conflict with the others. It’s a film about the power and responsibility of storytelling, and of the infinite variety of interpretation, made by a filmmaker who — more than most others — has utter mastery over narrative exposition in filmic form. Kurosawa really is peerless in this regard; every cut and every scene moves the narrative forward in some way, or develops a theme of the film. The acting is iconic (suitably so) and much has been written about the sun-dappled cinematography. But for all the exegeses and critical plaudits, it stands up as a film which still entertains and educates.

Criterion Extras: Chief among the extras is a documentary called A Testimony as an Image (2012). This is, essentially, a making-of extra, albeit with the benefit of over a half-century of hindsight. The few remaining living crew members who worked on Kurosawa’s film come together to discuss their memories of its creation, so we get plenty about how the script came together (from one of the assistant directors, and a script supervisor), then about the set construction (from one of the lighting people), about that notable cinematography and the challenges of shooting in a dark forest, and about the stresses Kurosawa was under to get the release finished despite setbacks include a studio fire. It’s based around these reminiscences, with a few archival shots and some explanatory text, but these elderly men (and one woman) retain vivid memories and their recollections are worth listening to.

Also on the disc are around 15 minutes of excerpts from a documentary about cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa, and a short address to camera by Robert Altman about how all the influences he stole from Kurosawa and from this film in particular. There’s also a halting radio interview with Takashi Shimura from around 1960, which is interesting if not especially enlightening. Donald Richie’s commentary track helps to pull out a lot of the themes, and engages the viewer with an awareness of all that Kurosawa and his team achieve in the film, making it even better and more interesting (I rewatched it with the commentary immediately after the film, and it didn’t get boring at all).

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Akira Kurosawa 黒澤明; Writers Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto 橋本忍 (based on the short stories 羅生門 “Rashomon” and 藪の中 “Yabu no Naka” [In a Grove] by Ryunosuke Akutagawa 芥川龍之介); Cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa 宮川一夫; Starring Toshiro Mifune 三船敏郎, Machiko Kyo 京マチ子, Masayuki Mori 森雅之, Takashi Shimura 志村喬; Length 88 minutes.

Seen at Paramount, Wellington, Wednesday 14 April 1999 (as well as earlier on VHS at home, Wellington, November 1997, and most recently on DVD at a friend’s home, London, Sunday 1 January 2017).

Criterion Sunday 116: 隠し砦の三悪人 Kakushi Toride no San Akunin (The Hidden Fortress, 1958)

By this point, Kurosawa knew pretty well how to craft a samurai film as a version of a Western. There’s an effortless feel to his filmmaking, probably helped here by focusing the story so much around not Toshiro Mifune’s warrior, but instead the foolish comedy characters of the peasant duo (Minoru Chiaki and Kamatari Fujiwara) whose avarice constantly blinds them to the dangers they’re in. Of course Mifune does his eye-catching thing of being strong and supportive as the General of a defeated tribe, while the tribe’s Princess (Misa Uehara) shows quite a bit of self-determination, even if she can’t be in a scene — even ostensibly disguised as a peasant — without looking obviously imperious. To that extent, some of the adventurous heroics strain credulity, but the film never sacrifices character-grounded observation to action setpieces or silly plot contrivances. This is a film that remains invested in its characters most of all.

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FILM REVIEW: Criterion Collection
Director Akira Kurosawa 黒澤明; Writers Shinobu Hashimoto 橋本忍, Ryuzo Kikushima 菊島隆三, Kurosawa and Hideo Oguni 小国英雄; Cinematographer Kazuo Yamasaki 山崎市雄; Starring Toshiro Mifune 三船敏郎, Misa Uehara 上原美佐, Minoru Chiaki 千秋実, Kamatari Fujiwara 藤原釜足; Length 139 minutes.

Seen at a friend’s home (DVD), London, Friday 26 August 2016.