In the period following World War II, Kurosawa's
work matured and deepened in response to the conditions of national
catastrophe and collapse in Japan. The war had ruined the nation,
and Kurosawa spoke through film as an artist addressing this devastation
and seeking a path beyond it. One of the best of these postwar films,
DRUNKEN ANGEL is about a slum doctor (Sanada) trying to cure a young
gangster of tuberculosis, with the physical cure of the disease used
as a metaphor for the kind of psychological changes that must accompany
postwar recovery. As he would do again in IKIRU
and RED BEARD, Kurosawa uses illness
as a social metaphor.
Toshiro Mifune (as the gangster Matsunaga) appears here for the first time in Kurosawa's work. Mifune impressed Kurosawa with his ferocious energy and his quick reactions. They would make 16 films together, becoming one of cinema's legendary director-actor partnerships. Another Kurosawa regular, Takashi Shimura, plays the doctor, and Kurosawa would go on to pair these two great actors in lead roles for the next decade.
-- Stephen Prince
Read an excerpt from Kurosawa's autobiography where he describes the genesis of the film and first encountering the acting skills of Toshiro Mifune.
|
|
 |
|
|
"In this picture I was finally myself. It was my picture. I was doing it and no one else."
|
 |
 |
 |
From KUROSAWA.
|
 |
 |
 |
|
