Review of Drunken Angel (1948) by Kevin N — 28 Jan 2012

This is Akira Kurosawa's first major film, by his own account, and it is certainly an impressive display of all that was to become of the director's signature style and method. It isn't quite a yakuza film, and despite the crude title and surprising violence of the picture, in the end it's really one of Kurosawa's gentlest observations of both hope and tragedy.

As usual, Tishiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura are transformative and magnetic. It's hard to take your eyes off of one to focus on the other, and when either one shares a scene with one of the other actors- well, to say that they steal the scene would be an understatement.

I like this film best when its being playfully nihilistic; Kurosawa has a tendency to be unsubtle with his emotional scenes (and this film becomes guilty of that toward the end), but here there are brilliant sequences that feature Mifune and Shimura just barking at each other, hitting each other, throwing things, etc.

Yet because of the care Kurosawa crafts the story with, we can see right through that facade of testosterone and see two very human characters who care for each other, and people in general. This is an entertaining and stylistic study of violence and responsibility, and the start of something quite big in Japanese cinema.