Kurosawa is one of my pet dislikes - the samurai stuff leaves me cold, the social dramas seem off the mark, and the crime capers just dreary. Part of the problem is that the man is humourless - I don't think I've seen a funny Kurosawa film, or even a funny moment. Still, here at last is something endurable. I had to overlook quite a lot in order to get to like this film but it was worth shifting aside the garbage to appreciate the gems.
Again, there is no humour here, only a silly story about a rookie cop who has his gun stolen, resulting in a hunt for the lost article whose weary obsessiveness is as horribly monomaniacal as Bicycle Thieves. The cop, Toshiro Mifune (the big guy from the Seven Samurai), has a face like a young Gregory Peck but a personality so melodramatically emotional that we wonder if he should be resting in some kind of institution. The senior cop is - oh Christ - it's Takashi Shimura, the old git from Ikiru. About half an hour in, I'm seriously thinking of giving up. They've gone looking, on a hunch, for a guy in a baseball stadium - they find him among 50,000 people. I'm thinking: I'd much rather watch a version where they don't find him.
None of this bodes well, but then Kurosawa - as if he really believes in this stuff - starts to crank out some pretty impressive scenes. We notice we are constantly peering through things and between things, through window frames into hovels, through smudgy glass doors, rainy windows, gauze curtains skeined with flowers, billows of smoke - all done in the ravishing von Sternberg manner.
We note that, instead of choreography, he places people strategically within a frame, drawing diametric patterns with faces scattered within a room, and lets the compositions -always elegant and effective - relate the meaning. In particular, there are portraits of two women from the sleazy underworld that stand out - he really lavishes attention on them and it does the film the world of good because the cops have long become tiresome.
The weather is close and the tension is building (way too much mopping of the brow from Shimura) - an old trick to build atmosphere, but it does provide the opportunity for several climactic scenes that run concurrently as the storm breaks.
The story is worthless, but watch it for the technique.
Again, there is no humour here, only a silly story about a rookie cop who has his gun stolen, resulting in a hunt for the lost article whose weary obsessiveness is as horribly monomaniacal as Bicycle Thieves. The cop, Toshiro Mifune (the big guy from the Seven Samurai), has a face like a young Gregory Peck but a personality so melodramatically emotional that we wonder if he should be resting in some kind of institution. The senior cop is - oh Christ - it's Takashi Shimura, the old git from Ikiru. About half an hour in, I'm seriously thinking of giving up. They've gone looking, on a hunch, for a guy in a baseball stadium - they find him among 50,000 people. I'm thinking: I'd much rather watch a version where they don't find him.
None of this bodes well, but then Kurosawa - as if he really believes in this stuff - starts to crank out some pretty impressive scenes. We notice we are constantly peering through things and between things, through window frames into hovels, through smudgy glass doors, rainy windows, gauze curtains skeined with flowers, billows of smoke - all done in the ravishing von Sternberg manner.
We note that, instead of choreography, he places people strategically within a frame, drawing diametric patterns with faces scattered within a room, and lets the compositions -always elegant and effective - relate the meaning. In particular, there are portraits of two women from the sleazy underworld that stand out - he really lavishes attention on them and it does the film the world of good because the cops have long become tiresome.
The weather is close and the tension is building (way too much mopping of the brow from Shimura) - an old trick to build atmosphere, but it does provide the opportunity for several climactic scenes that run concurrently as the storm breaks.
The story is worthless, but watch it for the technique.