Drunken Angel

The legendary collaboration between director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune began with 1948's Drunken Angel (Kurosawa's seventh film), a bona-fide classic of Japanese postwar cinema. Kurosawa felt this was the first film in which he successfully achieved a personal voice in terms of theme, style, and content, aided by Mifune's dynamic performance as Matsunaga, a volatile, tubercular hoodlum in postwar Tokyo. Mifune is memorably teamed here with Takashi Shimura (who later starred in the Kurosawa classics Ikiru and Seven Samurai) as Sanada, an alcoholic physician who urges Matsunaga to seek treatment for his tuberculosis—a fatal condition symbolic of the moral decay that characterized postwar Japan under American occupation (a decadence further reflected in the toxic swamp that serves as the film's central—and metaphorical—location). As doctor and patient clash, the film heads toward a climactic showdown between Matsunaga and the local Yakuza boss who's just been released from prison. A potent drama that is highly critical of post-WWII conditions in Tokyo, Drunken Angel makes its Criterion Collection debut with a host of extras, including a 25-minute documentary examining the challenges Kurosawa faced in satisfying American censors who were sensitive about negative depictions of U.S.-occupied Japan. In addition, the disc features an outstanding audio commentary by Japanese-film scholar Donald Richie (author of the definitive guide to Kurosawa's films), a 31-minute “making-of” documentary, and a booklet featuring an essay by cultural historian Ian Buruma and excerpts from Kurosawa's Something Like an Autobiography. Highly recommended. (J. Shannon)