How about some Kurosawa for Christmas.

Scandal (1950), directed by Akira Kurosawa. This is Kurosawa’s It’s a Wonderful Life! Well, not really, but it does take place over Christmas, and we have decorated trees and presents and festive goings-on. Oh, and we do have the importance of stars, although none of them have the name Clarence. As we would expect from Kurosawa, the story is deeply human. The plot is straight forward and even relevant to what we have today, a press focused on sensation and celebrity rather than truthful news. The opening scene finds artist Ichiro Aoye (Toshiro Mifune) painting in the mountains. A young woman, the well- known singer Miyako Saijo (Yoshiko Yamaguci), happens by. She has missed her bus and Ichiro offers to give her a ride back to the hotel where, coincidentally, both are staying. At the hotel, the two share a drink on a balcony, and while there a paparazzi takes their picture. This picture, along with an article about their affair, appears in the tabloid Amour. They are not having an affair. They are outraged, and Ichiro decides to sue the paper. At this point the film shifts focus from the singer and painter to the lawyer Hiruta (Takashi Shimura), who needs money to pay his daughter’s medical bills. She has tuberculosis. Hirutu also has a drinking problem. He takes a bribe from the publisher of Amour, a bribe intended to make him intentionally lose the court case. The film, then, is about honour, honesty, and the difference between a free press and a licence to fabricate and lie. We also have the joy of seeing Mifune ride a motorcycle with a fairly large decorated Christmas tree tied behind the driver’s seat. 

 

Sanjuro (1962), directed by Akira Kurosawa. This is the second film that follows the exploits of "thirty-year old" flower samurai, Sanjuro. Here he calls himself "camellias." And these flowers work their way into the plot. This time Sanjuro finds himself in a feudal town where corruption among high officials reigns. Nine young men, naive young men, are setting out to save their town from the corrupt official they think is the chamberlain. Sanjuro overhears them talking and he steps forward to advise them they are wrong. From what he has heard, he surmises that the superintendent, not the chamberlain, is the corrupt one. Anyway, the film involves Sanjuro maneuvering through various factions with the gaggle of nine young men following him like a line of ducklings. Then there is the chamberlain's wife who tells Sanjuro that he is an "unsheathed sword," and advises him not to go about killing people. All this is quite charming in a way Yojimbo is not. The humour is somewhat broader than in the earlier film, and everything goes along quite smoothly until the final showdown. This showdown is a show-stopper. The young men are impressed with Sanjuro's skill with his sword, but he tells them they are idiots as he turns and takes up his wandering life once again.

 

Drunken Angel (1948), directed by Akira Kurosawa. Kurosawa liked doctors. Doctors appear in this film, the next year’s Quiet Duel, and Kurosawa’s last film with Mifune, Red Beard (1965). Drunken Angel is Kurosawa’s first film with Toshiro Mifune who plays Matsunaga, a well-dressed yakuza who is standing in for the Big Boss who is serving a prison sentence. The doctor is Senada (another Kurosawa stalwart, Takashi Shimura). The film opens with Matsunaga arriving at Senada’s place to have treatment for a gunshot wound to the hand. Thus begins an uneasy friendship between these two unlikely people, both conducting a love affair with alcohol. The setting is a sump in a run-down section of post-war Tokyo. This oily pond with its bubbles of methane and garbage serves as a visual metaphor for conditions in the war-ravaged place. Disease rises from the sump, and Matsunaga has tuberculosis, although his sense of masculinity leads him to deny the disease. As always with Kurosawa what matters has to do with humanity, individuals who may represent something about the times, the country, but who remain distinctly individuals with their desires, their defeats, their melancholy, their relationships, their flaws and their dignity. The film has a tough sense of enclosure that suits the depiction of lives on the edge. These people live shadow lives and the camera work makes this clear. The final scene is as grisly as any in Kurosawa's films. The music - The Cuckoo Waltz and the Jungle song - are masterful counterpoints to the action.

 

Stray Dog (1949), directed by Akira Kurosawa. Most of Kurosawa’s films are in my collection, and I have seen them all. At least, I thought I had seen them all. Watching Stray Dog, however, was a surprise. I do not recall having seen it before, more’s the pity. This is an excellent crime thriller with some terrific suspense sequences and likeable characters. It is also so much more. The films deals with obsession, with social conditions in Japan just after the Second World War, with extremes of poverty, with family, with rain and with sunshine, and most especially about the effect of war upon those who survive the battles. The protagonist, rookie detective Murakami (Toshiro Mifune), finds himself chasing the man who has stolen his pistol. In effect, he finds himself chasing his own shadow. The two men are doppelgangers, one a policeman and the other a petty criminal. Aided by his mentor, Detective Sato (Takashi Shimura), Murakami comes of age, loses his innocence, and learns about family and friends. As always, Kurosawa is deeply humanistic. The film moves briskly and yet covers much territory. Kurosawa captures the intense heat of the July in which the action takes place. At times, watching people perspire, fan themselves, wipe their brows and faces, lounge about in an enervated manner virtually transfers the conditions we view beyond the screen. Early in the film we have a lengthy sequence in which Murakami, disguised as a vagrant veteran (he is, in fact, a veteran), wanders the ravaged city experiencing a world he might well have entered after his years of service had he not become a policeman. This sequence is directed by Kurosawa’s friend, Ishiro Honda, best know for his work on the later Godzilla series. I could go on about the tracs of Hitchcock I see in the fim, but suffice to say this is an impressive and important work in Kurosawa’s canon.

 

Yojimbo (1961), directed by Akira Kurosawa. We watched this film again last evening. It has been a long time since we saw it last. The combination of deep focus, tight close-ups, wide screen panoramas, intriguing characters who wander into caricature, frantic action, and humour still entertain. This film may not have the intricacy or richness of Seven Samurai, but it does succeed in pleasing. And it has been and continues to be a huge influence on later films. Toshiro Mifune as Sanjuro the wandering samurai/ronin delivers a wry, laconic, weary, and complex performance. His shoulder shrugs and his scratching and his toothpick tell us more about his character than his words. He is a bodyguard who kills those he is hired to guard. The film manages to celebrate this samurai's heroism while also showing the terrible cost of a life of violence. His adversary is a young man with a gun, and their showdown proves the mastery of the older man sans gun. The elegance of the old way seems preferable to the fire-power of the new world that is about to end the ways of the samurai. This film is not as intricate as Rashomon or as morally penetrating as Ikiru or as grand as Seven Samurai, yet it is Kurosawa's most successful and influential film.

 

Dreams (1990), directed by Akira Kurosawa. Also doing some directing here is Ishiro Honda, he of Godzilla fame (most notably the Mount Fuji in Red vignette). The film begins with a wedding and ends with a funeral. In between the first and final vignettes, we have six other vignettes that follow the “I’ character (a surrogate for Kurosawa himself) through a series of dreams. In all of the dream sequences death takes a part, most darkly in the first one that focuses on the Fox’s Wedding, and most lightly in the final one “The Water Village.” In all dreams, the myopia of human action rings loudly, most loudly in “The Water Demon,” and “The Tunnel.” The focus is on the ill-advised use of nuclear power and the unthinking ravaging of the environment. But what makes this film so stunning is its interest in form. What stands out for me is the Vincent Van Gogh sequence in which we see a young Kurosawa admiring a series of paintings on a gallery wall before he enters the world of these paintings – literally as well as figuratively. The experience of the film is something like this. We have eight “paintings” only paintings into which we find ourselves immersed. The colours are vivid and the compositions strikingly posed. Visually, this film is as astounding as anything you will see. The film offers an immersive experience. The first and final sequences are bright and colourful to point out, I imagine, an optimism against the waning of the light. A couple of other dreams are equally bright and colourful – “The Peach Orchard” and “Van Gogh” ones. Then we have the less bright dreams – “The Tunnel,” “The Water Demon,” and “The Blizzard.” The dreams are a mixture of memory and folktale, with a dash of Dante thrown in for “The Water Demon” one. Kurosawa here foregoes the action of his famous samurai films and gives us a slow contemplative take on dreams and human stupidity.

Sanshiro Sugata (1943), directed by Akira Kurosawa. Thanks to David McMillan, I am reading Stuart Galbraith IV's fulsome biography of Kurosawa and Mifune, and I am reminded that I have a copy of Kurosawa's first film as a director, Sanshiro Sugata. The copy I have I picked up, I think, in Shanghai, and it is visually okay, but the subtitles are, to say the least, incoherent. And the print that survives today is missing 17 minutes. Despite such things, the film is definitely worth watching. The story is straight forward, a brash young man wants to become a master of judo and he sets out to find a teacher. The teacher he finds lets him know that he needs to mature, to find self discipline and humanity. The young man does after a long night clinging to a stick in a swamp-like pool. He also meets a young woman whose father fights the young man in a contest between schools for the right to become teachers of the local police. The young woman has another admirer, a man in spiffy western clothes who also sports a slim moustache. This admirer fights the young man in a wind-swept field of tall grass in the film's climax. The young man wins, and he and the girl will have a future together. Simple. What makes this film interesting is its signs of the Kurosawa to come: its use of wipes, slow motion, nature (flower, water, clouds, wind, and so on) as emblematic of emotions, and striking compositions. The film is also a sly expression of Japanese wartime sensibility in that the young man represents the youth and vigour of the country's spirit and his main adversary has just a touch of the "west" about him. Finally, I like the local train at the end.

The Idiot (1951), directed by Akira Kurosawa. Adapted from Dostoyevsky's story, this film was initially 265 minutes long, but Kurosawa's studio demanded a shorter version, and what we now have is a 2 hour and 46 minute film that no doubt suffers from the drastic cut in running time. Apparently no copies of the longer version now exist. The Idiot as we have it has its virtues, but on the whole it does not work for me. The plot has ellipses that are confusing, and the central character depends on a certain nervous mannerism with his hands that begins to grate on me as the film goes on. The other characters are admirably presented, and I especially like Taeko, the film's femme fatale; she reminds me of Gloria Holden in Dracula's Daughter! The film uses many close-ups for reaction and emotional tension, and I think these work (I imagine Sergio Leone saw this film). The constant presence of snow and wind also resonates, and I especially like the shots in which tall snow banks and icicles serve as menacing mouths about to swallow the characters. We have what we expect from Kurosawa, careful and arresting compositions and intensely presented characters. All in all, this film registers Kurosawa's profound humanity and this is fine. However, his profound humanity finds more satisfying expression in the same year's Rashomon.