Stray Dog (1949) is a badly underappreciated film from the early part of the career of Akira Kurosawa, the greatest of all Asian film directors – to this point in time. Stray Dog may not be as much of an unqualified masterpiece as Rashômon, which Kurosawa made a year later, but it's a very well crafted and provocative film and one, I dare say, that many viewers will enjoy more than the renowned Rashômon. Stray Dog is a welcome convergence of craftsmanship with high entertainment value. For Stray Dog, Kurosawa gives us a moody thriller that holds viewer interest from beginning to end.

Historical Background: Akira Kurosawa was not always the revered master filmmaker that he later became, and remains today nearly seven years after his death in 1998. Like almost every other successful artist, he labored diligently and in obscurity before acquiring public attention and adulation. Kurosawa was born on March 23rd, 1910, the youngest of seven children of an army officer who later became an athletics instructor. Akira enrolled in art school and briefly attempted to earn a living as a commercial artist, but jumped at the chance to try his hand at the film industry, when, in 1936, a Japanese studio began recruiting for assistant directors. Soon, he was the young protégé of Kajiro Yamamoto (who made such films as Horse (1941)). In 1943, Kurosawa made his own first film, the unremarkable Judo Saga. Kurosawa's first three films, made during World War II, had to conform strictly to themes and substance that would advance his native country's propaganda initiatives. That necessity may have had the incidental benefit of speeding the development of Kurosawa's technical filmmaking skills, since it was only for such elements of his craft that he retained full control. It was not until his film Drunken Angel (1948), that Kurosawa drew the notice of film critics in Japan and internationally. Drunken Angel was also important as the first collaboration between Kurosawa and the now legendary Japanese actor, Toshiro Mifune.

Kurosawa followed that success, in 1949, with The Quiet Duel, a film which many viewers found indigestible. By Kurosawa's own account, "most people did not grasp what I most fervently wished them to . . . I myself had not thoroughly digested my ideas, nor did I express them in the best possible way." Yet, here is where we discover what separates a great master like Kurosawa from other merely competent filmmakers. In reflecting upon why he then turned to writing and directing his next film, Stray Dog, Kurosawa commented, "Maupassant instructed aspiring writers to extend their vision into realms where no one else could see, and to keep it up until the hitherto invisible became visible to everyone." And so he did. If Drunken Angel was Kurosawa's breakout film, Stray Dog (1949) was the film that confirmed his artistic genius. A year later, Kurosawa gained international fame with Rashômon (1950), winning the 1951 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film as well as the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Rashômon single handedly put Japanese cinema on the international map while also immortalizing the notion of differing points of view as a dramatic element in mysteries and crime stories. From there, Kurosawa never looked back, directing a string of great films in the fifties that included Ikiru (1952), The Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), and The Hidden Fortress (1958). He continued his run in the sixties with such extraordinary films as The Bad Sleep Well (1960), Yojimbo (1961), Sanjuro (1962), High and Low (1963), and Red Beard (1965). He continued to direct films sporadically in the seventies and after, including, notably, Dersu Uzala (1975), Kagemusha (1980), Ran (1985), and Dreams (1990).

The Story: The opening shot is a close-up of the head of a panting dog, his tongue protruding and rolling from side to side. Over the strains of some moody, nightclub-like riffs, the narrator listlessly intones, "It was an unbearably hot day." And so it is. A young rookie policeman, Murakami (Toshiro Mifune), is seen standing in front of the lieutenant's desk, mortified to be reporting the theft of his police pistol – a colt – by a pickpocket on the trolley car. Earlier in the day, Detective Murakami had left the sweltering target practice range and headed home. Suddenly finding his pistol missing, he had given chase to the likely culprit, but the man had slipped away after an extended pursuit. Murakami is so ashamed, he offers his letter of resignation, but the lieutenant promptly tears it up. To make matters worse, a shooting involving a colt is soon reported. The alarmed Murakami tracks down one of his spent shells from the target range and, to his consternation, it confirms that the gun used in the crime was his own stolen weapon. Murakami becomes obsessed with recovery his gun before it is used in any further crimes. Easier said than done!

Murakami is able to identify from mug shots of pickpocket specialists a woman who had been standing next to him on the trolley. Meanwhile, his gun is used in a homicide. Murakami is assigned to work with the veteran homicide detective, Sato (Takashi Shimura), who is investigating the killing. The contrast between their styles is evident from the beginning. The inexperienced Murakami, driven by anxiety and guilt, relentlessly charges in, trying to move the case forward by sheer force of will. Sato, the decorated veteran, takes a more paced and methodical approach, carefully picking his battles. Sato becomes a mentor for the young rookie.

After finding the female pickpocket or pickpocket's accomplice, Murakami tails her relentlessly until she finally offers him a lead on where the gun may have been fenced. This takes Murakami, in a beautifully filmed segment, into the seediest ghetto in Tokyo, through alleys, brothels, and dives. Murakami ultimately discovers and arrests a young woman, (Noriko Sengoku), involved in peddling stolen guns. Her black market operation also loans out guns to desperate people, holding their "rice cards" (postwar ration cards) as collateral. Through diligent police work, the investigation leads through a taxi service, a nightclub dancer, Harumi (Keiko Awaji), a baseball park, and a male acquaintance, to the suspect, Yusa (Isao Kimura). Like Murakami, Yusa is a veteran of World War II, and both had suffered similar indignities, including having their backpacks stolen as they returned from military to civilian life. As you might imagine, the plot culminates in a tense showdown, the details of which I'll leave for readers to discover on their own.

Themes: Thematically, this film runs deeper than the average film noir. The "stray dog" of the title refers to both Murakami's missing revolver (which is being used in a series of violent crimes) and to those members of society who turn to violent crime. Sato, who is presumably too old to have fought in World War II, harks back to a time when values relating to honorable behavior were paramount in Japanese society. He views Yusa and others like him as the equivalent of rabid dogs. Murakami, by contrast, had experiences like those that drove Yusa over the edge and understands that he could very easily have ended up as part of the criminal world. The applicable Western saying is, "There but for the grace of God go I." Yusa is Murakami's doppelganger, in a sense, and Murakami feels this kinship all the move evidently when he goes undercover dressed in old military duds and wanders the same seedy establishments that Yusa frequents. He has to mimic his adversary in order to find him. In so doing, he makes an Orpheus-like descent into the underworld.

Twenty-five years later, America had its own difficulties with the reintegration of veterans returning from the Vietnam War. The reacclimation to civilian life is never easy after brutal wartime experiences, but all the more so when the effort was a losing one. It's the difference between being welcomed home as heroes and returning to a society that is ashamed of the defeat and wants mainly to forget it. For Japan, the postwar years were filled with shame and hostility toward the military that had brought them to devastation and the brink of annihilation. With corruption and black marketeering flourishing, it was easy for many unappreciated veterans to lapse into criminal pursuits. The ghetto scenes in Stray Dog were filmed in actual slums of Tokyo that were considered so dangerous in 1948 that a double had to be used in place of Mifune for some scenes. So, the issue that is implicit in Stray Dog is the plight of returning veterans. On the one hand, a society can't afford to be overly compassionate in relation to violent criminals, but, on the other hand, the circumstances leading so many veterans to criminal pursuits were the result of corrupt political leadership. Whether killers or cops, we all share the same humanity.

Our protagonist, Murakami, is under-socialized in his own ways, thought not criminally. He is anxious and high strung. He has to be reassured, as he reports to the lieutenant that his gun was stolen, "This isn't the army. We aren't going to beat you." Murakami is continuously trying to overcome obstacles by sheer force. He is especially inept at dealing with women, trying to force them to reveal information by dogged persistence. By contrast, Sato gains their confidence and cooperation through flattery, patience, and offers of cigarettes. It is no accident that most of the clues in this case are held by women. The idea of emasculation from war experiences is a multi-layered construct in Stray Dog. Japan, as a nation, felt emasculated by its sudden, humiliating defeat and subsequent submission to America's will during reconstruction. The unfortunate Murakami is helpless when it comes to dealing with the various femme fatales in this film. America (Miss Liberty, perhaps?) was the femme fatale that brought Japan to its knees, especially its military with all its machismo tradition.

Production Values: Stray Dog builds from the brilliant script (written by Kurosawa himself) and benefits from the sure hand of an accomplished filmmaker, even at this early stage of his career. The lead characters are thoroughly developed (among the most realistic detectives you'll ever encounter in film) and supported by an intriguing cast of secondary characters from the Tokyo underworld. The film is very well paced and suspenseful, yet offers deeper themes than is typical of its genre. There's a scene in a hotel in which the killer lurks nearby that is milked for all of the suspenseful tension possible. The killer's face is never shown until near the end of the film. Not all critics agree that this film is well paced. There are a few extended segments that are designed to build the film's eerie dark mood that some find overly long. There's an 8-9 minute, almost dialog-free, sequence in which Murakami wanders the alleys and dives of the ghetto, trying to make contact with one of the gunrunners. For myself and some other reviewers, these mood-establishing segments are among the best parts of the film.

Kurosawa also uses weather as a film element better than nearly any other director. The pervasive heat is every bit as important to this film as the rain was later in Rashômon. Kurosawa doesn't just tell you that it's hot; he continuously reinforces the point by having his characters dab their foreheads, sit in front of fans, or dab themselves with water. He makes you want to reach for the air conditioner controls even if you're watching the film in February. And yes, the rain does finally come to relieve the heat, but not until the plot is in its denouement. In this manner, the heat and the plot's tension go hand in hand.

The cinematography emphasizes a gritty style in the tradition of realism, especially for the scenes in the slums. Kurosawa makes more use of montage editing in this film than was his usual custom, which helps create the pace and tension required in the noir genre. The camerawork is mostly fluid, with a lot of dolly shots. Mise-en-scene is perfected down to the tiniest details. The cinematographer, Asakazu Nakai, makes creative use of shadows and has an uncommon command of lighting level for symbolic purposes. As Murakami "descends" into the underworld of the Tokyo black market slums, each frame grows progressively more underlit. The soundtrack mixes Western and traditional Japanese music to highlight the distinction between the decadent slums and traditional Japanese values as represented by Sato.

Toshiro Mifune was just twenty-nine years of age when this film was made and younger than most viewers will have seen him previously. He brings all of his familiar agitation, impulsivity, and intense stare to the part, characteristics that we've learned to recognize as his hallmark qualities. He had already appeared in Drunken Angel (1948) for Kurosawa and would appear many times more, in such films as Rashômon (1950), The Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958), and Yojimbo (1961). He also appeared in the Samurai trilogy, beginning with Samurai 1: Musashi Miyamoto, and in Chushingura (1962). Takashi Shimura is fully the equal of his famous costar in this film. His performance is delicately restrained. He too was a Kurosawa regular, appearing in Drunken Angel (1948), Rashômon (1950), Ikiru (1952), The Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958), and Yojimbo (1961). You can also find him in Kwaidan (1964). Noriko Sengoku is very good in the part of the gun dealer. She previous appeared in Drunken Angel for Kurosawa. Keiko Awaji was even better as the pretty and morally ambivalent showgirl, Harumi. She later played the part of Kimiko in The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954). Isao Kimura (who apparently later went by "Ko Kimura") was the youngest samurai in The Seven Samurai (1954) and also appeared in Kurosawa's other noir thriller, High and Low (1963).

Bottom-Line: The Criterion release of Stray Dogs is their usual excellent restoration, with superb picture and audio quality. There are three intriguing extras. First, there's a 32-minute documentary that belongs to a series originally created by Toho Video entitled Akira Kurosawa: It Is Wonderful to Create. This segment deals specifically with Stray Dog. It includes interviews with actress Keiko Awaji and several longtime production colleagues of Kurosawa. Second, there is a good audio commentary track with Stephen Prince, with screen by screen analysis of such issues as mise-en-scene, editing, camera movements, and sound. Third, in the booklet that accompanies the DVD, there is a very interesting essay by Kurosawa about Stray Dog (from which I extracted one of the quotes used in this review).

Stray Dog is 122 minutes in length, but is so engaging that the time flies by. It is in Japanese with optional English subtitles. For those already acquainted with Kurosawa but who may have overlooked this particular film, get out there and take a look at it. For those looking for an entry point to Kurosawa, I'd recommend The Seven Samurai as a first experience, but this film as another highly accessible Kurosawa offering.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Japan:

The Ballad of Narayama
The Burmese Harp
Chushingura
Drunken Angel
The Eel
Floating Weeds
Gate of Hell
The Hidden Fortress
High and Low
Ikiru
Kagemusha
Kwaidan
Ran
Rashômon
Red Beard
Samurai 1: Musashi Miyamoto
Sanjuro
Sanshô, the Baliff
The Seven Samurai
Shall We Dance?
The Woman in the Dunes
Yojimbo

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older