There is little in the way of idealization in Drunken Angel, which takes place in the slums of postwar Tokyo and focuses the dregs of society--both the impoverished and the criminals who feed on them. Kurosawa literalizes the social corruption by setting the majority of the action around a fetid cesspool in the middle of a black market square. The cesspool, which becomes like a major character, constantly bubbling and retching, is the first thing we see in the film (in close-up, no less, giving it the appearance of an alien landscape). Kurosawa uses it frequently as a transition device, and even when it is not the primary focus, it is always there in the background, reminding us in purely visual terms of everything that is poisonous and destructive.

Doctor Sanada, the physician who first treats Matsunaga for a bullet wound to the hand, is played by Takashi Shimura, another of Kurosawa's favorite actors (they collaborated on 22 films, this being their fifth). Kurosawa often cast Shimura as Mifune's opposite (for example, in 1954's Seven Samurai Shimura played the wise and noble samurai leader while Mifune played the buffoonish samurai impostor), but here he uses them as two sides of the same coin. While Sanada exists in legitimate society and Matsunaga in the criminal underworld, they have much in common, including their anger and frustration with the world around them. Matsunaga is sick morally and physically (it is discovered he has tuberculosis and is therefore dying), and Sanada is wrestling with his own demons, namely the alcoholism that drives him to drink from his own medical supplies. Yet, despite his flaws, Sanada is at heart a good man who yearns to help those who won't help themselves. Thus, Matsunaga is a perfect case for him--a wayward, tubercular criminal who needs to redeem his moral ways in order to save his own life.

A crucial subplot in the film involves the return of a yakuza don named Okada (Reisaburo Yamamoto), who has been in prison for the past four years for cutting up a man's face with a knife. Okada serves several purposes in the film. First, he provides a further link between Sanada and Matsunaga in that his abused mistress, Miyo (Chieko Nakakita), now works as Sanada's nurse. When Okada threatens violence to reclaim her, Matsunaga, despite coughing up blood and being on the verge of death, feels that he must defend the doctor, even if it means his own demise. The ensuing fight between the two criminals--one on the path to redemption, the other beyond any kind of salvation--is one of Kurosawa's most bravura violent setpieces, conveying with simple authority the desperation of two men hellbent on killing each other. On a cultural level, Okada represents the “old” Japanese ways of feudalism and honor, which the postwar occupying Americans were trying to drive out. He is, in a sense, a relic who emerged from prison to find Japan a much different place than when he went in, which is a none-too-subtle jab at the connections between feudal honor and criminality.

While Drunken Angel is best known as the first time Kurosawa and Mifune worked together, it was also a breakthrough for Kurosawa as a filmmaker. He made the film completely on his own terms, and even though he had to concede certain elements to the occupying American censors (including the out-of-place optimistic ending), it is still a singular vision of the general corruption of Japanese society in the wake of World War II. He had explored this terrain before and would continue to do so for several years, using the struggle of good characters amid the ruins of Tokyo and its rising black markets as a way to confront both the lingering memories of defeat and the challenges of rebuilding that lay ahead.

Copyright ©2007 James Kendrick

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