Walking Kurosawa's Road: Scandal (1950)

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.

 

Scandal (aka "Shūbun" aka 醜聞,  Akira Kurosawa, 1950) The changes that had come over Japan in the post-War occupation had been well-documented in the early works of Kurosawa, but with this film, the director would look at what he saw as the corruption of the Japanese soul, certainly spurred by Western influences, but more for the hunger to make a "big kill". 1950's Scandal can be considered just as pertinent today with its focus on the "bread and circuses" world of celebrity (earned or not) and notoriety, "The price you pay for being famous..." and the manufacture of "fake news" for monetary gain, or gain of any kind. It would lament the fate of honesty when beset on all sides by the forces of moral corruption.

 

It's a very simple story, but with internal complexities, and deft dialogue exchanges that would fit neatly into a film made today. In fact, I wish a lot of people would see it these days. Why that is, after a recap:

Ichiro Aoye (Toshirô Mifune) is spending the day at one of his favorite places, Kappazawa, painting one of his impressionistic works on a favorite theme. He is surrounded by locals who look on in curiosity, commenting on the work in progress. Critics. They are joined by Miyako Saijo (Shirley Yamaguchi), a classical singer, who has missed her bus on the way to a resort hotel in Kaminoyu, and Aoye offers to give her a ride on his motorcycle, as they are staying at the same place. Now, Miyako is a big deal, certainly bigger than a successful artist, and when they get to the resort, she's approached by paparatchi from the scandal sheet "Amour" for an interview, which she refuses, as she is on a retreat and is generally shy of publicity. This does not sit well with the photographers, who are determined to get something to print one way or another.

Their opportunity comes when Miyako and Aoye innocently share some tea on her balcony. The photog's snap away and take it back to their publisher, Hori (Eitarô Ozawa), who publishes the photos with a salacious story—"The Love Story of Miyako Saijo"—which sells flies off the shelves and sets tongues wagging. Aoye returns to town and continues to paint, planning a showing. But, he is recognized on the street from the story, which he knows nothing about, and he motor-bikes over to the Amour offices, demanding to see the latest issue. The editor, Asai (Shin'ichi Himori) gives him a copy and Aoye reads, appalled. He attacks Asai and threatens legal action and stomps out.

Aoye fully intends to sue, but when he approaches Miyako, she is reluctant as she is a private person and doesn't want to encourage further rumors—“I don’t want popularity without respect. I won’t be a freak on display!” But, Aoye holds a press conference condemning the story as lies, while Hori holds his own gathering, standing by his story and casting aspersions on Aoye to drive up circulation. Aoye has trouble finding a lawyer, but the down and out Otokichi Hiruta (Takashi Shimura) approaches him, expressing sympathy and promoting a lawsuit as a cause célèbre against moral corruption. Aoye is doubtful of how successful Hiruta's work would be, but when he visits the attorney's home, he meets the man's tubercular daughter (Yôko Katsuragi) and has a change of heart, even convincing Miyako to be a part of the lawsuit.

The issue of Aoye/Saijo v. Amour Magazine is a pretty cut and dried case of moral good versus evil and audiences would have already picked sides (if they had any conscience at all), so Kurosawa takes the focus off that and switches to the lawyer Hiruta as the character that dominates the last half of the film—a man of divided loyalties (but for a good cause), who runs the risk of ruining the case and letting the slanderers getting off free. Obviously, this was not something Kurosawa was in favor of, as the movie was a condemnation of the "verbal gangsterism" of a Western influenced press (“This was not freedom of expression, I felt, it was violence against a person on the part of those who possess the weapon of publicity. I felt that this new tendency had to be stamped out before it could spread.”). In the same way he showed the increasing prevalence on Japanese culture by including Western songs, like Christmas carols, "Auld Lang Syne", and even "Buttons and Bows" ("East is East and West is West," indeed!).

But, Kurosawa is an excellent storyteller interested in telling an interesting story, as well as—since we're on this good versus evil road—being in sympathy with the good. That lawyer, with his complicated morals and divided loyalties, seemed more in tune with the Japanese he wanted to speak to—the ones who supported the war effort and the ones who sacrificed principle in the post-war chaos—that they could walk the better path and atone and make a better world for the country, rather than the dog-eat-dog one he saw it become. Such a story can come off as a bit preachy, not unlike "A Christmas Carol," and Scandal does for a stretch, but given the wretched cynicism of the Amour publisher character, perhaps it's needed.

One looks at the internet now, in this country, and at the cynical bodies of the legislatures that seem only concerned with lining their pockets and winning no matter what freedoms they step on, and one can only say that Kurosawa's film is still relevant, still truthful, still needed, but laments that the proudly corrupt would just scoff and dismiss (those bastards).

This would be Kurosawa's last film in what most film scholars call his early period; his next film would move away from the present day of Japan and move back into history and Myth and would be released the same year in Japan, but, more importantly, it would be the first of his films released to the West within a year of its Japanese debut (Kurosawa's films were previously withheld, due to either censorship by Japan's American occupiers, or for its controversial content—Drunken Angel made its American debut in 1959, Stray Dog premiered in 1963, The Quiet Duel in 1979, One Wonderful Sunday in 1982!). That next film would see Kurosawa recognized throughout the world as an exceptional voice in the cinema, and start the long string of films most associated with the name Akira Kurosawa.

House of Bamboo (1955)

House of Bamboo (Samuel Fuller, 1955) When is a film noir not a film noir? Well, director Sam Fuller shoved the envelope on that thriller sub-set as far as it could go with this crime drama set in Japan, filmed in Tokyo in Cinemascope and Deluxe color. A remake of The Street with No Name—same script idea by Harry Kleiner (who is credited), but a different setting half a world away, no FBI co-operation, but most importantly, different director—the two films couldn't be more different—although both films boasted extensive filming on location (the earlier film hedged its bets by filming in the grimier parts of Los Angeles, which it dubbed "Carver City").

Tokyo, on the other hand, was a bustling metropolis, something director Fuller sought to convey. This led to a change in casting; originally, Gary Cooper was slated to top-line the film, but he was too big a star not to avoid unwanted attention and ruin shots in crowded streets. So, Robert Stack was picked, as he was not so well known in Japan, and that enabled Fuller to film street-scenes from parked vehicles—to avoid paying filming permits—and get something that seemed authentic without autograph-seekers and the curious looking right at the camera.

The film begins with a train robbery...but not just any train robbery. A military munitions train bound for Tokyo from Kyoto is robbed by a well-timed team of criminals, who are able to steal guns and rounds from Army guards and Japanese police. The heist is done with military precision and a "take-no-prisoners" attitude—if one of their own gets shot or injured on the job, there are no heroics, but are shot and killed on the spot. The Army and Japanese police have no leads, until a subsequent crime is pulled off with the very weapons that were stolen from the train robbery...and, despite the gang's shooting of one of their wounded, that hood, Webber, manages to survive...just long enough to blurt out his wife's name, Mariko (Shirley Yamaguchi), and give the cops a letter in his possession from an Army buddy named Eddie Spanier, who Webber has invited to Japan after he gets out of prison.

Sure as shootin', Eddie (Robert Stack) gets off a boat in Tokyo and makes his way to Mariko, after first trying to track her down with a dance company and then at a bath. She's scared that Eddie is actually part of the gang who killed her husband, but after telling her about the letter he sent, and showing her a photo of him and Webber together, she begins to trust him...and trust him even more when he tells her to lay low, lest his old gang-mates try to find her. 

Eddie, however, is  disappointed. That letter promised a job, but no way to contact the dead man's gang. He decides to freelance, and see how far that will get him. He goes to local pachinko parlor's and shakes down the owners for protection, garnering just enough to get him some seed money...and the attention of criminal Sandy Dawson (Robert Ryan), whose territory Spanier has managed to cross. When he tries to shake down another pachinko hall, Spanier—who also dabbles in the protection business—has him beaten up and crashes into a meeting with his gang to provide a warning to get out of Japan. And "sayonara".

Eddie doesn't scare that easily. So, Dawson has him framed for a robbery and arrested, thereby allowing the Japanese Police to get his rap sheet wired to them, and an insider at the force forwards the info to the mob-boss. Dawson's intrigued. Intrigued enough to invite Eddie into his gang of dishonorably discharged ex-servicemen. But, he has to met certain standards: he has to swear an oath of loyalty, and he has to clean himself up—get a good suit and stop looking like a bum. He's an Organization man now.

Truth is, he always was. Because Eddie Spanier is actually Eddie Kenner, an Army investigator sent to infiltrate Dawson's gang for the joint Military/Japanese Police investigation of that train heist in the opening. He recruits Mariko to be his "kimono girl" so that if he gets embroiled in gang activities, she can go warn the authorities about any jobs going down...and maybe she'll find out who killed her husband.

From then on, it's a cat and mouse game, Eddie playing along with the Dawson gang, Mariko playing along with Eddie, while the authorities hang back expecting word from an operative who could get smoked if he so much as twists his ankle during a job. Except something curious happens: during a robbery on one of Japan's docks, Dawson's crew comes under fire from the guards—one gets hit and is immediately shot, lest he get captured and can give evidence. But, then Eddie gets shot in the leg and just as he's about to be put out of the gang's misery, Dawson himself grabs him and helps him escape.

That's not S.O.P. for the gang and pretty soon, Griff (Cameron Mitchell) who is Sandy's "ichiban" in the group starts noticing that Dawson is favoring Eddie over him, and is wondering if he has lost his position and prestige. Griff is a hot-head, Dawson knows that, so right before a big raid, Sandy tells him he's out of the gang until he cools down. That job, though, is cut short when Eddie sends Mariko to tip off the police, and when Sandy's informant in headquarters lets the boss know that plans are set in motion to capture them, he calls off the operation in mid-heist, and thinking Griff tipped off the cops, sets out to personally exact revenge in one of the most abrupt and shocking murders in noir.

Fuller's direction in House of Bamboo is tight and formal, even in the scenes shot undercover in the streets, but never more so than in that assassination scene—all done in one shot as Dawson breaks in on Griff taking a bath and then shooting him point blank, the bullets going through the wooden tub, the water draining through the bullet-holes. But, the scene continues as Ryan's Dawson stares into the dead face of his former number one boy and tries to understand "why'd you do that, Griff? Why'd you betray me?" Stack may be the erstwhile hero in the film, but he's just stiff enough to be unsympathetic, whereas Ryan's mob-boss comes across as a competent, slick operator, well in command and capable of feeling betrayed.

That ups the stakes in the game that Kenner is playing because Dawson may be a cool customer, but any sense of betrayal turns him murderous, and once the bath-murder scene occurs, one is never certain just how unhinged Dawson may become where no one is safe. This is a far cry from the movie's source The Street with No Name, but Fuller has been playing fast and lose with that original story from the moment he kept Kenner's identity a secret. With the unfamiliar Japanese surroundings, and his manipulations of the original story, the House of Bamboo is, quite literally, a world apart from its origins.

DeForest Kelley caught in the shadows of The House of Bamboo

The last scene, a final reel shoot-out, makes it explicit: where The Street with No Name ended in a night-time chase and shoot-out in a warehouse, the one in The House of Bamboo takes place in an office building with an amusement park on the open top floor. There's no rushing around in the shadows; it all takes place in the open daylight overlooking the city on a preposterous merry-go-round around a world sculpture. Surreal and dangerous, it is an over-the-top ending to an exotic blend of dark and light, in bright eye-popping colors using a movie musical's pallete to a story of the dark side of society.