Drunken Angel

In post-war Tokyo, an alcoholic doctor works in a district built around a stagnant pool. A young yakuza comes in to have a bullet removed; the doctor finds tuberculosis and tries to force him into treatment. The patient accepts neither the illness nor the attention. The film is not interested in crime. It is interested in two stubborn men trying to save each other: the doctor's drinking is an untreated illness too, and the film puts them in the same category. The filthy pool at the centre of the district is that idea made visible. The form is realist: narrow streets, a nightclub, black-market stalls and the famous scene that ends in a fight in spilled paint. Occupation censorship forbade direct reference to the American presence. Kurosawa put it in obliquely: jazz, Western clothes, the dancing at the club and the general rot of the neighbourhood are constantly onscreen. It is Akira Kurosawa's first work with Toshirō Mifune, the start of a partnership that would run to sixteen films. Kurosawa said he let the actor play freely rather than rein him in. Takashi Shimura plays the doctor and is the one who really carries the film. Kurosawa counted this as his own first complete film. Who it is for: viewers who like early Kurosawa and films looking at post-war Japan. Who it is not for: anyone expecting action. It opens like a yakuza story but is built on illness and helplessness.