Drunken Angel

Drunken Angel, Kurosawa’s 7th feature film, is typically considered the beginning of the director’s career as a major film maker. In order to investigate and denounce the yakuza world, Kurosawa and Uekusa created a pair of characters: a gangster with a destructive influence on himself and those around him, and a doctor who is flawed but nevertheless a far more constructive, healing and well-meaning force.

Their teacher-discipline type relationship is something that many critics have identified as a motif that repeats throughout much of Kurosawa’s career. Kurosawa’s film is one of big performances from the actors and small touches from the director. The two leads play extraordinary well, despite the fact that neither performance here would constitute the best of their career. Takashi Shimura as Dr. Sanada is confident; assured. His delivery of the troubled role is precisely what is required from him. He is the necessary antithesis to Mifune’s gangster. Though much of their behavior is the same, Shimura is quiet whereas Mifune is loud. Drunken Matsunaga stumbles about, clinging to women, or alternatively just disheveled, putting himself forward in an unkempt state – hair ruffled, jacket off-kilter, arms akimbo. Shimura’s Sanada is the opposite when in a similar haze: he sits passively and yet is animated; he breaks into rowdy song without warning but never stands up to raze his humble abode to the ground. The younger version of Shimura, one with thick, full hair, and genuine, large eyes, gives the Dr. Sanada role a credible foundation for the good person Kurosawa wants the viewer to find underneath. On the surface Sanada is curt; his eyes and presentation offer a different story.