Drunken Angel

Drunken Angel, Kurosawa’s eighth feature, is often cited as the great director’s first mature and truly personal work; it was the first film over which Kurosawa had creative control, and also his first to star frequent leading man Toshiro Mifune. The film is set in the grim aftermath of World War II. Takashi Shimura, the other actor most often associated with Kurosawa, has the title role as an alcoholic doctor working in the slums of a town overrun by Yakuza gangsters. Mifune is the thug who comes to his clinic to have a bullet removed. When it is discovered that the young hood has tuberculosis, a love-hate relationship develops between the two very different men. A powerful drama capturing the misery of postwar Japan, Drunken Angel recalls the great neorealist films of Italy, but also suggests the Warner Brothers gangster movies of the 1930s, with Mifune in the typical James Cagney role. “In this picture I was finally myself. It was my picture. I was doing it and no one else” (Kurosawa). “This picture is to Japanese cinema as Paisa or Bicycle Thieves is to Italian . . . It perfectly epitomizes a period” (Donald Richie). B&W, 35mm, in Japanese with English subtitles. 100 mins.