Drunken Angel (1948)

Don't Believe the Hype

Brilliant and touching

There's a good chance the film will make you laugh out loud, but if it doesn't, there's an even better chance it will make you openly sob.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

For a titan of cinema who would build his oeuvre around unpacking thematic contradictions and dichotomies of beauty and filth, Drunken Angel has to be one of legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's most on-point treatises. Being Kurosawa's first post-war film, Drunken Angel fully embodies the melancholy spirit of the movement of post-WWII 'rubble films,' such as Rossellini's Rome, Open City and Carol Reed's The Third Man, but stands out by being far more infused with the poetic, grandiose existentialism and cheeky humour that would continue to shape Kurosawa's later classics. In equal parts a tenacious character study and parable for strains of hopeless, self-destructive behaviour in post-War, American-occupied Japan, Drunken Angel remains a searing early effort by a master craftsman quickly and resonantly finding his feet in the industry. Situated somewhere between a film noir and a medical buddy-cop drama, Kurosawa's film revolves around a doctor (Takashi Shimura) and his Yakuza patient (Toshiro Mifune, in his breakout role) who respect and care about each other too innately to do anything but verbally abuse and occasionally try to murder one another. Shimura's doctor is our titular 'drunken angel,' obsessed with saving people at all costs, yet constantly, aggressively inebriated to help numb the pain of his healing feeling like an increasingly losing battle. With his office overlooking a fetid, disease-riddled swamp, the doctor is reduced to belligerently bellowing at children playing to avoid the tuberculosis-infested waters, only to have his efforts discounted as the ramblings of an old, crackpot addict. He finds vestiges of meaning within the prospect of saving Mifune's swaggering Yakuza hotshot, dying of tuberculosis, but too entrenched in stubborn denial to relinquish his hard-partying gangster lifestyle. Through the heated interactions between them, Kurosawa teases out the impossibility yet necessity of healthy coping mechanisms within such a hopeless world, but that, bleakness aside, human compassion provides an ever-present bastion of hope. His peppering the dialogue with fleeting but reliably present moments of sour humour only helps the drama sink in as all the more credibly human, warts, flaws, addictions and all. Concentrating on character study rather than plot lends the film an almost stage play feel, but the plot intensifies somewhat with the final act return of a rival Yakuza mobster, who exacerbates all subplots of conflict, none the least being Mifune's growing desperation for social performance. Here, Kurosawa returns to his soon-to-be customary interrogations of human nature, by showing both Mifune and Shimura's doctor genuinely struggling with identity beyond their respective functions - Shimura's only sense of value in life comes from his role as physician, just as Mifune appears genuinely agonized by the prospect of relinquishing the Yakuza, even to save his own life. These conflicts are lend poetic gravitas by Kurosawa's stark, whimsically mobile cinematography, panning over the derelict buildings and festering chemical swamp, accompanied by desolate, swooping wind sounds, like an apocalyptic wasteland. But, even amidst a climactic showdown as bloody as any noir, Kurosawa never relinquishes leitmotifs of hope, like the mysterious, recurring strumming of a tranquil guitar over the swamp at night, simultaneously zen and threatening. If this rotting, destitute place is hell, Kurosawa insinuates, there are always angels therein, even if they are far more bedraggled (and, yes, often drunken) than any biblical portraits would have it. Shimura and Mifune would grow to become Kurosawa's most recurring stock players, and their exceptional work here is a testament to their acute watchability. Shimura's omnipresent pout allows him to convey the deepest, most empathetic pathos, yet always with a veneer of goofiness, and his 'sad clown' image perfectly bottles the doctor's passion, muted underneath layers of impotent, inebriated hopelessness. Similarly, Mifune's ferociously physical charisma makes his casting as a Yakuza intimidatingly believable, only to have his creeping doubt and flirtations with a new life beyond his self-destruction feel all the more unexpectedly vulnerable. In one dialogue-free scene alone, Mifune exhibits more acting than many stars showcase throughout an entire picture: blind-drunk at a night club, he sways back and forth, a Cheshire cat smile plastered across his face, but his eyes betraying his haunted loneliness. Then, when prompted to get up and dance with an attractive woman, he - previously barely able to prop his eyes open - whirls her into a surprisingly suave, perfectly executed dance routine despite looking at the point of slumping into unconsciousness at the drop of a hat, his hollow grin never leaving his face. It's a fleeting but painfully poignant moment, and as telling of the indomitable star he would become as any of his more explosive outbursts. Simpler and smaller in scope than some of Kurosawa's more expansive later classics, but no less visceral in its intimacy, Drunken Angel remains one of the most powerful and necessary entries into Kurosawa's body of work. It's not a light watch - but, if you're looking for frivolity in Kurosawa, you're barking up the wrong auteur - but it's more than suitably elevated by the interplay between its magnetic leads, Kurosawa's life-saving bursts of irreverence and an achingly hopeful ending. Nearly 60 years after its release, Drunken Angel remains an abiding testament to Kurosawa's uncanny ability to blend philosophy, beautifully grim imagery, and moments of abject silliness into something fundamentally human. And just try getting that disturbingly serene guitar riff out of your head after the credits. Just try. -9/10

DRUNKEN ANGEL is a symbolic name for a melodrama. The director, who is willing to experiment and mix styles. The story is woven with several philosophical aspects. This is a very successful combination of noir and neo-realism. The characterization is superb. The doctor, who is prone to alcohol and grumpy young gangster are the main protagonists. The doctor wants to treat. Gangster wants to enjoy life. A vicious disease connects them. The drama develops into a dark and brutal atmosphere. One character tries to control another. The symbolism of the conflict. What is actually true evil and how it should be treated? The truth is superficial. In this case, patients treated Society.The director made such a construction in which all is somehow sick. The man does not fight against corruption and social injustice, but against their own will power. I ask myself again. What should be treated? The problem is bigger than a drunken doctor, sick hooligan, unfaithful wife or vicious gangsters.The film has a lot of clichés, here and there already seen the sequence, but all in all not bad. Some scenes are extremely strong. No matter what you are not as emotional. Music Box, violent death after wrestling or contaminated water are very impressive. All figures contain a lot of sarcasm. The acting is good and authentic. The music is great.

Considered by many to be Kurosawa's first film (actually his eighth) of real note, I watched it as part of the newly released BFI Kurosawa Crime Collection.I found it more accessible and initially enjoyable than his later and more well known samurai classics, probably because it could have been directed by Howard Hawkes or any number of leading crime flick directors of the period. With Toshiro Mifune (in his first of many Kurosawa roles) dressed in sharp suits and slicked back hair, he looks every part a Chicago gangster. Jazz bands play in bars, with western style dancing.Takeshi Shimura (another Kurosawa regular) plays the drunk doc, who despairs at the slums around him and the typhoid-infested pond that everything is dumped into that is on his doorstep. He takes a bullet from the younger man and then treats his TB. As both men lurch unsteadily from their respective curses (Mifune soon looking very haggard and unwell) and the two men form an uneasy alliance. Then the yakuza's plot is taken away from him, due to his ailing health.Drunken Angel displays not only a sharp snapshot on post-war Japan and western influences but nuanced and fine performances and a great story of two very different men, who find maybe that the differences aren't so great, after all.

Drunken Angel (1948) *** (out of 4) Straight-forward and simple drama about the troubled relationship between a low level gangster (Toshiro Mifune) dying of tuberculosis and the drunken doctor (Takashi Shimura) trying to save him during post-war Japan. There are a lot of different genres on display in this early Kurosawa film including noir, gangster and an odd couple drama. The three don't always mix too well together but Kurosawa's great direction mixed with the great lead performances make this a must see even if the gang would go onto much better films. What works the best here are the performances by Shimura and Mifune. The two men work extremely well together because they make their characters so well rounded to the point where you feel as if you know everything about the men. Mifune really digs deep into the gangster and this leads to many well acted scenes including the drunken one where the gangster must finally realize how serious his disease is. Shimura clearly steals the film as the angry and often times bitter, if still caring, drunken doctor. The amount of anger he displays with his character while still making us understand why he cares so much is perfectly done by the actor. Cheiko Nakakita and Reizaburo Yamamoto are also very good in their supporting roles of the nurse and gang boss. The cinematography is also top-notch especially a dream like sequence where the dying gangster invisions himself as a zombie-like creature. This scene is very effective as is another where spitting blood is involved. I think at times the film is way too over dramatic and this includes many scenes dealing with the "swampness" of Japan. Even with that said, this is still a very impressive drama that fans of Kurosawa will want to check out.