04-19-2020, 10:14 AM
This one starts out slowly, but picks up considerably after 10 or 11 frames.
Mifune is a rookie detective on the Tokyo police force who loses his gun to a pickpocket on a crowded bus. While his superiors take the matter in stride, Mifune is so horrified, embarrassed, and desperate to retrieve it (before it is used to kill someone) that he risks taking shortcuts that will make him a bad cop.
So his superiors assign him to the case under a veteran detective (Takashi Shimura, as if you haven't guessed it), whose relaxed and friendly demeanor toward criminal types and slow measured pace in pursuing the investigation baffle and alarm Mifune.
It sounds relatively straightforward, but there are so many moral and ethical twists and turns, with empathy for the plight of the poor and desolate in an impoverished post-war Tokyo, showing how it almost necessitates crime to survive. There's an ethnographic richness and value to the film as it immerses the viewer in the streets, ghettos, bars, and dance halls of the time.
Then there's Kurosawa's brilliant framing, and how he contrasts so many things in a single scene, suspense, humor, mood, theme...
Oh, and there's a baseball game. Yes, Japanese baseball in 1949. Big stadium, packed seats, professional players. It's a major scene. I thought baseball didn't come to Japan until much later. Then again, there might have had some gunboat diplomacy behind its early adoption. But what do I know? This was before I was born.
I thought I'd seen this before and almost skipped it. I know I saw a Japanese movie with Dog in the title, and it had to do with a criminal on a rooftop. But nope, a far cry from this. So I'm glad I decided to watch this.
Needless to say, this is very essential Kurosawa.
Mifune is a rookie detective on the Tokyo police force who loses his gun to a pickpocket on a crowded bus. While his superiors take the matter in stride, Mifune is so horrified, embarrassed, and desperate to retrieve it (before it is used to kill someone) that he risks taking shortcuts that will make him a bad cop.
So his superiors assign him to the case under a veteran detective (Takashi Shimura, as if you haven't guessed it), whose relaxed and friendly demeanor toward criminal types and slow measured pace in pursuing the investigation baffle and alarm Mifune.
It sounds relatively straightforward, but there are so many moral and ethical twists and turns, with empathy for the plight of the poor and desolate in an impoverished post-war Tokyo, showing how it almost necessitates crime to survive. There's an ethnographic richness and value to the film as it immerses the viewer in the streets, ghettos, bars, and dance halls of the time.
Then there's Kurosawa's brilliant framing, and how he contrasts so many things in a single scene, suspense, humor, mood, theme...
Oh, and there's a baseball game. Yes, Japanese baseball in 1949. Big stadium, packed seats, professional players. It's a major scene. I thought baseball didn't come to Japan until much later. Then again, there might have had some gunboat diplomacy behind its early adoption. But what do I know? This was before I was born.
I thought I'd seen this before and almost skipped it. I know I saw a Japanese movie with Dog in the title, and it had to do with a criminal on a rooftop. But nope, a far cry from this. So I'm glad I decided to watch this.
Needless to say, this is very essential Kurosawa.
I'm nobody's pony.
