Il duello silenzioso

One rarely, if ever goes wrong watching a film directed by Akira Kurosawa and starring Toshirô Mifune, even if it one of the early ones. In this film, however, the star is not Mifune, but the man who plays his father, Takashi Shimura, destined to achieve greater fame in Ikiru, and The Seven Samurai.

Mifune comes back from the war with Syphilis, a disease he contracted during an operation. He must make drastic changes in his life starting with his finance of six years, Miki Sanjo. He finds the man who gave him the disease, and spends his energy trying to get him to stop spreading it, horrified that he has a pregnant wife.

Noriko Sengoku (Stray Dog, Drunken Angel, Blind Beast) plays a self-absorbed nurse trainee and provides comedy to an otherwise depressing film. She transforms after having a baby she didn't want, and after learning of Mifune's plight. She is a talented performer in this film showing many facets.

Every Akira Kurosawa film is at least interesting, and even in a work like The Quiet Duel, which is designed possible as something of a 'minor' work in the director's cannon, there's things about it that are striking and exceptional. The opening scene of the doctor, played by Toshiro Mifune, operating on the patient who will change his life forever, has a double-sided tension to it about not just the fate of the operation but of something else (this helps if you don't know what is going to happen). The way the scene is cut, the effect of the rain outside, the pan at the floor, the rain falling on the pan and making the one louder sound, it all amounts of a near-classic Kurosawa scene. This and the climax are, arguably, the best scenes of what is otherwise a good if shaky melodrama.

The problem might just be that I'm not tuned into this tearjerker side of Kurosawa, at least one that isn't as well-cooked, so to speak, as some of his best efforts. The premise is really good, as a doctor contracts syphilis by a mistake while operating on a patient during the war, and has to treat himself with medicine and cannot find a way to tell his to-be wife about his ailment (or, in fact, why he cannot marry). And saying that this isn't entirely 'well-cooked' is to say that the premise, while fascinating, doesn't entirely develop into a fully fascinating story. There are patches that seem to kind of coast, like something one might see on day-time television (not quite soap opera but close), and it's only in the last third that things really start to pick up dramatically.

Thankfully, Mifune is on his A-game as usual with his best collaborator at the helm, particularly in a scene where he (uncharacteristically for Kurosawa) breaks down in tears after seeing his once-possible-wife off to marry someone else, and there's a strange, cool mixture of musical instruments on the soundtrack- not quite what one would expect for a melodrama (i.e. xylophone, harmonica, harps, accordions). By the climax, as I said, it gets very good with the original patient Takata coming back in a drunken, syphilis-infected frenzy to the hospital. It just isn't enough, overall, to recommend it as highly as Kurosawa's best; Red Beard and Drunken Angel, also starring Mifune, are much better as medical/hospital dramas. 7.5/10

An admonitory melodrama movingly sustained by splendid acting. Toshiro Mifune would later play a different sort of strong and silent character (John Wayne's an unworthy comparison). Here the silence is pulled inward, the head often drooped, the silence a wish not to offend. No wonder it's like the female characters are pounding on the door of this tall, handsome man when he cannot open himself to them. He's doing noble work as a physician, and fortunately the sombre story is sometimes lightened with patients grateful for cure, as it is in a way by his irresponsible double with whom he shares a probably incurable infection. Well set-up scenes often beautifully photographed, like the detail of rainwater dripping into a pan during a wartime jungle operation, coming after the surgeon has asked the patient's pulse to be monitored.

Another great drama by the great director with a lot of complicated but thought-provoking issues to think about.

Mifune was amazing playing a silent character who is suffering a lot from the inside but has a strong prudent heart to not to cause hurt towards others, and the supporting cast especially the nurse were great. I also liked that this film chose an unusual way (in a sense an unorthodox way as compared to other films) to not let the sufferer reveal the whole truth to people important to him even though it might have been better that way, because that is a real Asian behaviour.

The main problem I find with this film is that the first two-thirds of the film seem to have inconsistencies in its flow of plot that sort of distorted the perception of the relationships between the important characters, and things only really start to hasten and intensify during the last fraction of the film. This is okay as a story but if the flow is more refined it could have looked a little less awkward.

In 1944, in WWII, Dr. Kyoji Fujisaki (Toshirô Mifune) cuts his finger with the scalpel during a surgery in a field hospital and is infected by spirochete from his patient Susumu Nakada (Kenjiro Uemura). After the blood test, he realizes that he has contracted syphilis, but he does not have the necessary medicine to treat the disease. He advises Nakada to seek medical treatment for his disease. In 1946, after the war, he breaks off his six years engagement with his beloved fiancée Misao Matsumoto (Miki Sanjo) but he does not tell the truth to her to let her go and find another man to get married. The hopeless apprentice nurse Rui Minegishi (Noriko Sengoku) witnesses Kioji injecting Salvarsan to treat his syphilis, and first she misunderstands why the doctor is sick. Later, after discovering the truth about his disease, she changes her behavior and becomes the confident listener of the doctor's inner feelings. When Kyoji accidentally meets Nakada in the police station of his town and finds that his wife is pregnant, he warns the reckless man about the risk of his lack of responsibility to his wife and baby.

"Shizukanaru Ketto" is a little and quite unknown gem from Master Akira Kurosawa, with a heartbreaking tale about the inner duel between conscience and desire of a pure and good doctor contaminated by a corrupt and dirty patient. Like in "Yoidore Tenshi" ("Drunken Angel") from the previous year, the story may be also interpreted in a metaphoric sense that reflects the moment of after-war society in Japan, where "a pure man is contaminated by the dirtiness and only three, five or ten years later he will be healed after a long treatment". The strong code of honor of Japanese people in the 40's explains the shame that would be for Dr. Fyoji to disclose that he had the dishonored syphilis. His sacrifice, hiding the truth from Misao, to give a chance to his twenty-seven year-old fiancée to find another husband is awesome. But the emotional scene when Kyoji discloses his feelings to Minegishi made my eyes wet, and is one of the most heartbreaking dialogs I have seen in a classic movie. Last but not the least; the story never becomes a melodramatic soap-opera due to the superb direction of Mr. Kurosawa. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Duelo Silencioso" ("Silent Duel")