Impressions of Paintings and Photos

A brash young painter and his corrupt lawyer fight the rise of tabloid journalism in Kurosawa Akira's 1950 film Scandal (醜聞). It's not considered one of Kurosawa's best films but I don't agree with one assessment on Wikipedia that says it doesn't rise above the efforts of average directors. There are still plenty of interesting creative choices and a boldness in its intentions.

I came across my old blog entry about the film from 2009 which made me want to watch it again. Having lived in Japan now for almost six years, I have a better idea of just how much gossip and social interpretation dominate the culture but perhaps it was just beginning to take on its current form when Kurosawa decided to make this movie criticising it. Like most of his films in the five or six years following World War II, he was preoccupied in one way or another with the introduction of Western cultural elements in Japan. He portrays the idiosyncratic brashness of Mifune Toshiro's character, Aoe, the painter, as admirable. "It's fun to be rude," says Aoe at one point who feels no qualms about meeting the beautiful young singer, Miyako (Yamaguchi Yoshiko), in her hotel room. But rudeness isn't so fun when a photo journalist secretly takes a picture of the two of them together and the tabloid creates a story about how they have an illicit love affair. Then he storms into their office, punches the editor in chief, and sues the lot of them.

The problem at work is that freedom of independent thought and action requires a citizenry of sufficient cultivation and maturity to function. Again, I found Aoe's comments on artistic nudes in Japan to be interesting: "I'm just beginning to have doubts about nude art in Japan. We lack both the tradition and the healthy spirit to accept the naked body. People say our nudes lack proportion. What they really lack is spirit."

This is equally interesting in a Japan where the trend is turning away from nudity. There's the curious case of the recent Ranma 1/2 adaptation which is almost identical to the adaptation from the '80s except that it has no real nudity. '80s Japanese anime is renowned outside Japan for its copious nudity and I wrote a few months ago about the extraordinary number of nude statues throughout the country, with nude statues of women and girls being gradually removed from public viewing. Perhaps the powers-that-be are right in their belief that the instincts of the common Japanese citizen are too prurient, but I've always been of the opinion that censorship is more likely to exacerbate a problem than to alleviate it.

Kurosawa was reportedly dissatisfied with how the film changes focus in its second half and becomes a story about Shimura Takashi's character, the lawyer. It's kind of a dry run for Ikiru but more Dickensian as Shimura's character has a pure-hearted, bedridden daughter to care for. So he accepts a bribe from the tabloid to throw the case in order to lavish her with gifts. I was also surprised by how heavily Christmas and New Year's are featured in the film, it ended up being surprisingly appropriate seasonal viewing. I didn't expect to be watching Mifune Toshiro riding a motorcycle with a Christmas tree but I appreciated it.

Scandal is available on The Criterion Channel.