When Not to Drink

I found myself watching Drunken Angel (酔いどれ天使) again last week. From 1948, it's Kurosawa Akira's first collaboration with Mifune Toshiro and Kurosawa's only film to feature a yakuza protagonist. Kurosawa hated yakuza enough that he was never compelled to romanticise them, not even in this film in which a handsome young Mifune was playing one.

There's some ambiguity in the title as to whether it refers to Mifune's character or the doctor played by Shimura Takashi. Both of them drink a lot but Shimura vociferously rebukes Mifune for drinking throughout the film due to Mifune's tuberculosis. Shimura's character thinks there's a slim chance for prolonging the young gangster's life if he can just lay off the drink. Shimura sees no reason to lead by example and has several scenes humorously spotlighting his drinking, like one in which he mixes tea with 100% medical alcohol and another in which he fills a glass to the very brim with whiskey and carefully drinks off the top.

Kurosawa's point may have been to reassure the audience that he was not condemning alcohol consumption in all circumstances.

The movie's called a film noir and that's a fair label. It has the existential tension. The key scene is, after Mifune's finally agreed to stop drinking, he unexpectedly meets his old boss, who's just gotten out of prison. Of course the first thing the old man wants to do is go get a drink. How much choice does Mifune's character really have? Having a drink may kill him but not having a drink is surely the first step in upending his entire life. Here Kurosawa makes a pointed criticism of rigid cultural practices, much as American films noir used tension to subtly criticise American morality.

Drunken Angel is available on The Criterion Channel.