Drunken Angel (酔いどれ天使, Yoidore Tenshi) is a 1948 Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa. It stars Takashi Shimura as an alcoholic doctor in postwar Japan who treats a young, small-time hood named Matsunaga, (Toshirô Mifune in his first role working with Kurosawa,) after a gunfight with a rival syndicate. The doctor diagnoses the young gangster's tuberculosis, and convinces him to begin treatment for it. The two enjoy an uneasy friendship until the gangster's former boss is released from prison and seeks to take his gang over once again. The sick young man then stops following the doctors advice, and slips back into habits that threaten to kill him, while his life is further endangered by his gangster lifestyle.
DrunkenAngel (1948) was Kurosawa’s seventh film (he started in 1943 with Sanshiro Sugata) and by all accounts his first major work.
Overall, though, DrunkenAngel is a dynamic examination of a postwar Japan in physical and psychic chaos, and a typically strong look at the forces that bind men, and sometimes destroy them.
DrunkenAngel is a transitional film for Japanese cinema and especially for Kurosawa; it offers a vivid glimpse of postwar life (both rotten and restoring), and signals the full blossoming of Kurosawa's talent.
Feeds |
Contact