Walking Kurosawa's Road: Drunken Angel

The inability to write about the films of Akira Kurosawa to my satisfaction led me to to take a different path: start at the beginning, take each film in sequence, one after the other, and watch the progression of the man from film-maker to Master. I'm hoping I can write more intelligently and more knowledgeably about his work by, step by step, Walking Kurosawa's Road.


Drunken Angel aka "Yoidore tenshi" aka 酔いどれ天使 (Akira Kurosawa, 1948) Corruption is at the heart and soul of Kurosawa's third film—the story of a village doctor and his realtionship with the town, and in particular, one yakuza gangster suffering from tuberculosis. Kurosawa, making films under the post-war U.S. occupation, uses corruption as a mataphor for the West's influence on Japanese culture, by showing his yakuza as criminals straight out of a Warner Bros. picture. Toshirô Mifune's Matsunaga (his first role in a Kurosawa film) reminds one of a young Anthony Quinn, and Reisaburo Yamamoto's hood is reminiscent of Bogart at his shadiest.

But the focus of the film is Doctor Sanada (Takashi Shimura), a portrait straight out of a John Ford movie of a self-medicating physician, battling disease as best he can, when the source of much of it lies in the heart of the very city he is serving. A river now is clogged with garbage, refuse and God knows what else, and pestilence carrying mosquitoes are everywhere, especially given the fetid heat of the town. 

It's enough to drive a doctor to sake to drown the depression that must come from daily fighting a losing battle. Not just because the town is turning rancid, but because most of the towns-people ignore what he says—kids wash in the river even when the doc yells at them about typhus, TB patients are out getting drunk, but he can't help himself—"Once you get a patient, you can't stop fussing over them" says his assistant Miyo (Chieko Nakakita from One Wonderful Sunday). But, his bluntness and lousy bedside manner guarantees he'll never get a more cushy, high paying practice.

Early on, he's visited by a young tough, complaining that he slammed his hand in a door. Sanada unwraps the makeshift bandage and eyes the young hoodlum—this is more than slamming a hand in a door. "There was a nail in it," says Matsunaga (Mifune) lamely. But, when Sanada explores the wound, he pulls out a bullet. "You call that a nail?" he gives the kid a look as he drops it on the table. "I won't make any trouble," grins Matsunaga. "I hear you take care of my guys." Sanada is not impressed. "I'm warning you," he tells the tough. "I'm pretty pricey. I make it a policy to rip off deadbeats."

But, the gangster is also subject to coughing fits. And Sanada insists on testing him for tuberculosis. Matsunaga is reluctant, but the doctor brow-beats him into it with cutting remarks—"You've always got a line, don't you?" Matsunaga will snear at him at one point. But, when he listens to the young man's breathing, Sanada is sure he's got a hole in his lung, but an X-ray will confirm the diagnosis. Matsunaga lashes out at him in anger, admittedly as much as he can do with a bandaged hand. But, the doctor seeks him out the next day and insists that he get an X-ray taken with a specialist.

Later on at dinner, Sanada wonders why he cares—he speculates because the yakuza reminds him of himself at that age, all-attitude and posturing. There's another concern: Matsunaga's old boss, Okada (Yamamoto) will be getting out of prison soon, after four years, and Miyo, Sanada's assistant, used to be his moll. And Miyo is consumed with guilt and fear—guilt that she might bring Okada's wrath on the doctor's house and practice and fear of being found out by her old lover. She confesses that it might be better just to go back to him once he's sprung. But, Sanada will have nothing of it and tells her to stay with her new life.

Matsunaga visits the the doctor again and tells him he tore up the X-rays. This enrages Sanada, accusing Matsunaga of being a coward for not facing his fears, despite the trappings of being a tough guy in the yakuza. They fight again, but eventually, he does bring the X-rays for Sanada to examine, and he learns the truth—the TB is far more advanced than thought. And Matsunaga promises Sanada that he will give up drinking and smoking in an attempt to beat the disease.

But, Okada gets released, and one of the first things he does is seek out Matsunaga, gets him drunk and humiliates him in a power play to establish who is boss of the town. After so brief an attempt to heal himself, Matsunaga is worse than ever, coughing up blood, and Sanada is sent for to see after him. Rather than berate him, the doctor opens up a music box and tells the gangster to "dream of your childhood."

But, Matsunaga's dreams, instead, are troubled and have nothing to do with childhood. In a surreal sequence, he dreams of himself, well-dressed, walking along the beach, the waves tempestuous and violent. He finds a coffin adrift in the waves, and, breaking it open with an ax, finds his diseased self in the coffin, which rises from the coffin and chases him down the beach. He wakes up just before he is caught by his fate.

Matsunaga is under attack, from without and within. At the time Sanada is berating him to save his own life, Matsunaga ignores him to attack Okada to try and retain his status, and hold off Okada's attempts to bullying Miyo back—although why he cares is unclear as he's stolen Matsunaga's social-climbing girlfriend (Michiyo Kogure). Dr. Sanada, though, is just belligerent enough to think he can hold off Okada himself—plus, he has another more traditional, "rational" (his favorite term) strategy by getting the police involved.

But, Matsunaga has a code of the yakuza to follow—Okada has no such code, evidently. So, he leaves his sick-bed, gets dressed, gets by Miyo, who's tries to stop him (he locks her in a room) and goes out to take on Okada. Sick and weak, he goes to Okada to fight it out, in one of the most inelegant fight sequences ever not choreographed. Where Kurosawa has kept the camera-expressiveness down, the fight is filmed at odd angles and the actors are encouraged to over-emote like animals. It's a bizarre scene, clumsy and desperate...and deadly.

Drunken Angel marks a turning point for Kurosawa. He has been expressive, emotional, surely, but this film may be his first masterpiece. Everything comes together and supports the disparate elements that clash and unite throughout the film.

It also should be noted that it is the first film where Kurosawa featured the actor Toshirô Mifune,who would be the cornerstone of so many of Kurosawa's films. Every actor in Drunken Angel is at the top of their game, but Mifune's portrayal of a once-vibrant tough systematically dying by his own actions is impressive in tis ability to evoke tragedy. Kurosawa re-worked the screenplay once he knew what he had in Mifune's performance, taking some of the emphasis from Shimura's doctor to the charismatic self-destructive tough, giving the film a more tragic air befitting the toxic environment in which the the film is set. But, despite the hopeless setting, the film-maker manages to give his two protagonists moments of redemption, allowing the doctor to appreciate one small victory in a moment of tragedy in his efforts to eradicate the TB epidemic, and for Matsunaga an honorable death, his body coated with white paint, indicating purity.

Kurosawa begins the film with the fetid, bubbling swamp and keeps returning to it throughout the film. But, he ends it in the city as two of the film's survivors disappear into a throng of people, supplying the viewer with a final image, providing us, as well, with a kind of redemption, certainly one of hope.