The Quiet Duel

Kurosawa’s The Quiet Duel stars favourite leading man Toshiro Mifune, fresh off his gangster role in Drunken Angel, as an idealistic young army surgeon who is accidentally infected with syphilis during a battle-field operation. Returning home after the war, he cannot bring himself to explain to his waiting fiancée why he must break off their engagement. Takashi Shimura, Kurosawa’s other favourite actor, plays the protagonist’s father, a doctor himself; Shimura had also played a doctor, opposite Mifune’s hoodlum, in Drunken Angel. The Quiet Duel was Kurosawa’s only film based on a contemporary (as opposed to a classical) Japanese play; Kurosawa saw the stage production and thought the role “would be good for Mifune. He had been the gangster, now he could be the doctor.” Donald Richie suggests this is the only Kurosawa movie “in which the director thought first of the actor, then of the film.” “Demonstrating another aspect of his affinity to the cinematic conventions of the West, Kurosawa has constructed an out-and-out Hollywood melodrama, tear-stained and replete with noble self-sacrifice . . . Acting and atmosphere are both of a high standard and, ironically, the film has acquired special interest today in its unmistakable parallel with AIDS” (Bloomsbury Foreign Film Guide). B&W, 16mm, in Japanese with English subtitles. 95 mins.