is a 1948 Japanese yakuza film directed by Akira Kurosawa and co-written by Kurosawa and Keinosuke Uekusa. Produced by Toho and starring Takashi Shimura and Toshiro Mifune, it tells the story of the alcoholic doctor Sanada and his yakuza patient Matsunaga. Sanada tries to save Matsunaga from illness and the corruption brought about by the crime in the community while Matsunaga finds himself gradually sidelined within the syndicate and becomes increasingly self-destructive. The film was the first to depict the post-Second World War yakuza and is generally considered to be Kurosawa's first major work.
During the writing of the screenplay Kurosawa and Uekusa clashed over Uekusa's growing sympathies with the yakuza due to his regular meetings with a life-model to study for the character Matsunaga. Production began in 1947 amid a series of labour disputes in the Toho company. Filming lasted from November of that year to March 10, 1948. During production, Kurosawa encountered a number of setbacks, including the death of his father in February 1948. The film was the first of sixteen collaborations between Kurosawa and Mifune, and the first collaboration between Kurosawa and Fumio Hayasaka. Kurosawa's work on Drunken Angel prompted him to think more about the relationship between music and image in film.
Despite facing censorship from the Civil Information and Education Section of the Allied occupation government, the film was released in Japan on April 27, 1948, to generally positive reviews. The film won awards for Best Film from Kinema Junpo and Mainichi Shimbun. After the international success of Rashomon (1950) at the 1951 Venice Film Festival, Toho promoted the film abroad. Analyses of Drunken Angel have looked at the pairing of multiple characters and their interactions in the postwar environment, with discussions focussing on the morality of its characters (the titular 'drunken angel'), intertextual references to the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky and contemporary noir fiction, and the symbolic meaning of the sump—a kind of open cesspool—seen throughout much of the film.
Plot Sanada is an alcoholic doctor living in a shanty town next to an open sump. He treats a small-time named Matsunaga—who was injured in a gunfight with a rival syndicate—despite his dislike of organised crime. Sanada diagnoses Matsunaga with tuberculosis; Matsunaga's initially violent reaction is interrupted by the arrival of Sanada's nurse Miyo. The following day Sanada goes to the local black market, which Matsunaga controls. He finds Matsunaga at a bar and attempts to persuade him to give up drinking and smoking; Matsunaga kicks him out. Sanada and Miyo discuss the imminent release from prison of Matsunaga's fellow yakuza and sworn brother Okada, who is also Miyo's abusive ex-boyfriend. Sanada continues treating other patients, including a high school student making progress against her tuberculosis. After some pestering, Matsunaga agrees to listen to the doctor's advice and quit drinking.
However, with Okada's release, Matsunaga quickly succumbs to peer pressure and slips back into his old habits with his fellow yakuza. Angered at the betrayal of his commitment to Matsunaga's treatment, Sanada rebukes him. Matsunaga finds himself gradually displaced within the yakuza syndicate, and after losing a large amount of money to Okada playing chō-han, he collapses and is taken to Sanada's clinic for the evening. Distressed as his lover leaves him for Okada and his illness takes a turn for the worse, Matsunaga leaves his apartment and is confronted by Sanada at the sump. Sanada implores Matsunaga to continue his treatment, while Matsunaga has a vision of his own corpse trying to kill him. Okada shows up at the clinic and threatens to kill the doctor if he does not tell him where to find Miyo, but Matsunaga intervenes and persuades him to leave, realising that his sworn brother cannot be trusted.
Hoping to resolve the issue, Matsunaga goes to the home of the boss of his syndicate, but overhears a discussion in which the boss tells Okada he intends to order Matsunaga to sacrifice him as a pawn in the war against a rival syndicate. Distressed and self-destructive, Matsunaga orders a drink from Gin, a local barmaid, who tries to persuade him to leave the slum with her and seek treatment in the countryside. The boss returns control of the black market to Okada, who orders the storeowners in his territory to refuse service to Matsunaga. He goes to Okada's apartment; there, he finds his sworn brother with his former lover, and angrily tries to stab Okada. While they are fighting Matsunaga starts to cough up blood. The two wrestle each other on the floor in spilled paint until Okada stabs Matsunaga in the chest, and the latter stumbles outside before he succumbs to his wounds and dies.
Okada is later arrested for the murder, and the boss collects money for his aid, but refuses to pay for Matsunaga's funeral. Gin, who had feelings for Matsunaga, pays for it instead and tells Sanada that she plans to take Matsunaga's ashes to be buried on her father's farm, where she had invited him to live with her. The doctor retorts that while he understands how she feels, he cannot forgive Matsunaga for throwing his life away. His student patient arrives and reveals that her tuberculosis is cured. The doctor happily leads her to the market to buy her the anmitsu he promised to treat her to once she was well.
Cast
Takashi Shimura as Doctor Sanada (真田) Toshiro Mifune as Matsunaga (松永) as Okada (岡田) Michiyo Kogure as Nanae (奈々江) Chieko Nakakita as Nurse Miyo (美代) Eitarō Shindō as Takahama (高浜) Noriko Sengoku as Gin (ぎん) Shizuko Kasagi as singer Masao Shimizu as Oyabun Yoshiko Kuga as schoolgirl
Production Development Drunken Angel was made in the context of a series of labour disputes with the Toho company, a major Japanese film studio. The powerful trade union had managed the production of films, with Kurosawa's prior works No Regrets for Our Youth (1946) and One Wonderful Sunday (1947) requiring the approval of the union. By the end of 1947, the union's influence had waned following a series of less profitable Toho releases. As a result, Kurosawa was able to produce the film with minimal interference from the studio and its union. Kurosawa co-wrote the film with his childhood friend Keinosuke Uekusa in their second and last collaboration. While staying at an inn at the seaside resort Atami, Kurosawa noticed that the prow of a sunken concrete ship was being used as a diving board by local children. Seeing it as an apt metaphor for Japan's defeat in the Second World War, this image became the open sump—a kind of cesspool—seen in Drunken Angel. Kurosawa intended the film to report on—and denounce—the growing power of the in postwar Japan.
During writing of the screenplay, Uekusa met up with a member of the yakuza to develop the character of Matsunaga. While he and Kurosawa had intended for his counterpart to be a morally upright humanistic young doctor, the character was difficult to conceptualise and was changed when the two remembered an encounter they had with an unlicensed alcoholic doctor in Tokyo's black market district. Having spent five days prior to the doctor's change in character unsure of how to progress the script, they finished writing the film in about one session. However, Uekusa's meetings with the yakuza character model caused him to sympathise with their way of life to the degree that he and Kurosawa eventually argued. Despite the speed with which the two of them finished the script, Kurosawa recalled the two of them sharing a rocky relationship during its development. Although they remained friends, they did not collaborate again after completing the script.
Pre-production and production Pre-production began in November 1947. Toshiro Mifune was cast after Kurosawa saw his performances in Snow Trail (1947) and Kajirō Yamamoto's (1947). Kurosawa had seen Mifune's audition to work at the Toho company in 1946 and had directly intervened in the hiring process in order to secure Mifune a position; the panel had wrongly interpreted the actor's wild behaviour during the audition as disrespect. Drunken Angel became the first of their sixteen collaborations. This was also the first film where Kurosawa worked with Yoshiro Muraki. The film was built around a pre-existing set, used in These Foolish Times. This set was of a shopping street with a black market, which Kurosawa credits for the origin of his interest in dissecting the character of yakuza gang members.
The film was produced by Toho and shot in black-and-white. Filming began in November 1947. During the course of production, Kurosawa faced a number of personal and professional problems. Toho executives pressured Kurosawa to finish production quickly, anxious to see more films in cinemas before any more potential strikes, and actress became ill shortly into production—she was replaced by Chieko Nakakita in January 1948. Additionally, in February, Kurosawa's father Isamu died at the age of 83. Kurosawa was under pressure to complete the film during the final weeks of shooting, and was unable to return to Akita Prefecture to be with his father.
Takashi Shimura loosely based his character of the doctor on the performance of Thomas Mitchell in Stagecoach (1939). Despite Shimura's role as the protagonist, Kurosawa later expressed difficulty in being able to contain Mifune's performance as the gangster so that he did not dominate the film with his screen presence. Kurosawa also praised the acting of Reizaburo Yamamoto, although he described being too afraid to approach him for some time due to his "frightening eyes". Filming ended on March 10, 1948. A 150-minute cut of Drunken Angel was made but never released; the film's negatives and remaining prints are of the 98-minute cut.
Music
Drunken Angel marked Kurosawa's first collaboration with composer Fumio Hayasaka. The two agreed on much of the film's composition. Kurosawa wrote memos (published in the April 1948 edition of Eiga Shunshu) that detailed his changing attitude towards the use of music in his films, becoming more conscious of its inclusion by matching it to parts of the script during the film's writing. For Okada's introductory scene, Kurosawa and Hayasaka wanted to use the song "Mack the Knife" from The Threepenny Opera, but found that it was copyrighted and the studio was unwilling to pay for the rights. The use of cheerful-sounding song "The Cuckoo Waltz" was designed to juxtapose the film's low-point of Matsunaga being rejected from different neighbourhood establishments. Kurosawa thought to use this song when, on the day he received news of his father's death, he heard the music over a loudspeaker and found that it intensified his own grief. According to Stuart Galbraith IV, the director and composer shook hands after discovering that they had had the same idea separately but simultaneously. The film's sound recorder was Wataru Konuma.
Occupation censorship At the time of Drunken Angel production, the Allied occupation government imposed restrictions on Japanese cinema. Films were encouraged to promote individual liberties and Japan's demilitarisation, while forbidden from promoting nationalistic or feudal values. From 1946, the Civil Information and Education Section enforced a double censorship of completed scripts during pre-production and completed films following the final edit. The occupation's censors required Kurosawa to rewrite several portions of the film mostly due to ethical concerns; for example, a mention of suicide was cut, and complaints were made concerning the film's frank depiction of prostitution and black markets. The film's ending was also changed; originally the doctor Sanada drove Matsunaga's corpse around the Tokyo slum. Matsunaga's manner of death also underwent several re-writes, with different characters responsible in different drafts.
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