Drunken Angel

1948
7.6| 1h38m| en
Details

Doctor Sanada treats gangster Matsunaga after he is wounded in a gunfight, and discovers that he is suffering from tuberculosis. Sanada tries to convince Matsunaga to stay for treatment, which would drastically change his lifestyle. They form an uneasy friendship until Matsunaga's old boss Okada returns from prison.

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Reviews

ada the leading man is my tpye
Rijndri Load of rubbish!!
SparkMore n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.
BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
bbrooks94 Akira Kurosawa's crime drama about the uneasy relationship between an alcoholic doctor (Takashi Shimura) and his unruly patient, recently diagnosed with tuberculosis, a small-time Yakuza hood (Toshiro Mifune) is utterly brilliant. This was Kurosawa's first film with Mifune (the greatest actor/director collaboration of all time? Add Shimura in there as well and you have the greatest threesome in cinema's history), who shines as the troubled but ultimately frustrating criminal. The sympathy we feel for Mifune's character doesn't feel genuine, he digs his own hole to an extent, yet the gritty and violent ending leaves you with a bitter feeling inside. One of regret. Shimura outshines Mifune as the doctor, a lovable drunk full of angst and regret at the state of post-war Japan, desperate to save those around him, not only through medical assistance but through instilling in them a social awareness, in an attempt to rebuild the crumbling Japan of the 1940s. He is a lone, ignored hero. Yet, the final moments provide us (and him) with some hope for the future. A very troubling and poignant experience.
bob-790-196018 In this first important film from Akira Kurosawa, the great director displays his Chekhovian empathy for suffering and his sense of the humanity at the heart of all of his characters.Dr. Sanada, played by Takashi Shimura, is often overbearing in his hatred of the pestilence-ridden city in which he practices and of the yakuza--mobsters--that hold the city in thrall. He drinks too much, is hardly a model of good clinical hygiene, and speaks rudely to just about everyone. Yet he has an abiding sense of duty to cure illness and in the case of the young gangster Matsunaga (Toshiro Mifune, in his first of many roles with Kurosawa)he is unable to resist caring about his TB-stricken patient. He sees his younger self in Matsunaga.Matsunaga, in turn, is arrogant and violent. Ordinary people, fearful of his power, bow to him when he passes in the streets of the community that he lords it over. Yet Kurosawa also shows us his vulnerability and forces us to understand his suffering as his disease progresses.Their stories are played out against a background of postwar misery shown in realistic detail and symbolized by the disease-ridden pools of muck that one encounters everywhere in the city. It's as if Italian neorealism had made its way to Japan. And there are also all the trappings of American film noir--the dives, the saloon girls, the gangster conflicts.Kurosawa could have been influenced by these foreign cinema trends, both flowering overseas at the time, but he was enough of a genius to have invented these techniques himself. Either way, it's a fine film with many wonderful images and dramatic sequences. Matsunaga's fight to the death with the mob boss who usurped his position is wonderfully gripping.
Luis Guillermo Cardona Happy encounter between master Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune great actor. Started the shooting of the film, the script was fully focused on the character of Dr. Sanada, a temperamental physician, sharp and heavy drinker, but at the same time noble and condescending, who played the wise actor Takashi Shimura, member of the filmic family of Japanese director. It was to show the ambivalent relationship of singular physician with some of his patients, and Mifune's character, a gangster named Matsunaga, who arrives to take you off a "nail", was intended as one more among Sanada's patients... but behold, the amazing performance of Toshiro delighted the visionary director leaves, and soon, his character is extended to the point of putting one on one with which interprets Shimura. And thus would begin a relationship that would lead to outstanding a number of films that are today the most significant part of which gave us the Far East ("Stray Dog", "Rashomon", "Seven Samurai", "Throne of Blood", "Yojimbo", "Red Beard"...).The story is set in a poor village, where gangsterism is a source of survival and power. The rain water inundated streets unpaved, and the mud then, becomes a leitmotif for Kurosawa reveals the sinking of being in the midst of alcohol and irresponsibility, and perhaps, the abandonment of a State for all miss opportunities.The Sanada and Matsunaga characters, move in an interesting love-hate, I accept you-you rejection, live and die, that accounts for human ambivalence where what seems is not as it seems.The doctor's character is also quite interesting, because he realizes the man with no pretensions, no worries of enrichment, and the ability to perform so naturally, falls in the act shamelessly unfair, in the sentence harsh and in the alcohol allows him to escape, at times, a reality that don't is offering great prospects. It is thus a portrait of ordinary people, viewed sympathetically and with the clearest assessment features. It is clear that Kurosawa, knew well the people.
Rindiana This good, if not great early Kurosawa is still rough around the edges and not free of obvious symbolism and narrative weaknesses. It all feels somewhat forced and not quite as fluent and natural as later works.But, needless to say, there are always pleasures to be had from a movie made by this wonderful artist: Kurosawa favourites Shimura and Mifune (in his first teaming with Kurosawa) give their usual multi-layered performances, the mise-en-scène is superb, and a sound gimmick featuring guitar-playing is brilliantly used to enhance atmosphere.In this instance, though, one cannot fully swallow the director's "life's a swamp but use your willpower and watch out for the silver lining"-attitude. He jumbled it this time. But glorious things would follow...7 out of 10 buckets of immaculately white paint