Having long ago seen the greatest Akira Kurosawa movies (in chronological order of their making: Stray Dog, Rashômon, Ikiru, 7 Samurai, Throne of Blood, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, Red Beard, Dersu Uzala, Kagemusha, Ran), I've been watching the early postwar movies now available in a Criterion Eclipse (no bonus feature) set.  "I Live in Fear" is the most ambitious and is available in the best print/transfer. (It's also the last-made of the five.) A tragedy about a raving older man obsessed with the prospects of nuclear warfare annihilation of his family(/ies), that is an easier film to admire than to like.

The one I like the most is "Scandal" (Shubun, 1950), an indictment of celebrity privacy-invasion and corruption of the judicial system. The young but already charismatic Toshiro Mifune played Ichirô Aoye, a genial and pure-of-heart painter working in the mountains who meets a young pop singer Miyako Saijo (Yamaguchi Yoshiko , also known as Shirley Yamaguchi) who has refused to be interviewed by a scandal sheet called Amour.

She is being stalked by paparazzi (before the word was coined). Ichirô gives her a ride on his motorcycle back to the inn where both are staying, and Amour published a lurid "The True Love Story of Miyako Saijo. Ichirô sues for slander, but his lawyer Hiruta (Shimura Takashi, who appeared in at least 20 Kurosawa films and about as many Godzilla movies), who is not particularly good at his job (and knows it), is bribed b the magazine publishers to throw the case. His greed is not for personal gain but to buy things for his tubercular dying  daughter (Katsuragi Yuko). As in "I Live in Fear," Shimura's character wrestles with his conscience. The second half of the movie is Shimura's. Mifune's idealistic (or naive) young hero becomes a supporting character, as Yamaguchi is even in the first part which would seem to center on smearing her in retaliation for non-cooperation with the tabloid press. Neither of their characters is much developed.

I like the mountain scenes, and the far less urbanized Tokyo on view in the second half is fascinating, but the last half seems (in long retrospect) to be sketching for Shimura's central role in "Ikiru" (though what was immediately ahead was "Rashômon," an international sensation that put Kurosawa on the map of world cinema).

Some see "Scandal" as a Dosteoveskyan turn for Kurosawa, though I think that the earlier "Drunken Angel" in which Shimura played a slum physician and Mifune a tubercular gangster is more Dosteoveskyan. (Kurosawa's 1951 adaptation of The Idiot had 99 minutes lopped off his cut.) I'd say that "Scandal" is Kurosawa's most Capraesque redemption movie ( the 1947 "One Wonderful Sunday" is plenty Capracorny, too). The portrait of scandal-inventing celebrity journalism has most certainly not lost its relevance.

©  2009, Stephen O. Murray

(On the culminating Kurosawa masterpiece, "Ran" (1985) see my discussion at
www.associatedcontent.com/article/1520719/akira_kurosawas_culminating_achievment.html?cat=40

I can also recommend two documentaries on Kurosawa: "A.K." which is a bonus feature on the Criterion edition of "Ran" and "Kurosawa.")

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD