Scandalo

Akira Kurosawa has now become one of my favourite directors. Even in some of his weaker films like Dreams and Rhapsody in August there is much to like. All his films are beautifully made and directed, with complex and humanistic characters and themes, fine music and great acting. Scandal is not one of my favourites from Kurosawa like Seven Samurai, Ran, Hidden Fortress, Ikiru and Yojimbo, I did find some scenes like the Auld Lang Syne bar scene on the melodramatic side and I found Toshiro Mifune's performance here to be the least interesting of his I've seen so far and his character somewhat dissuasive. That is not to say at all that Mifune is bad, he is actually very good with his usual brooding persona, just that he has done characters that were more human and interesting. Besides while I have found Mifune to have stolen the films he's in before, he's outclassed by a brilliant Takashi Shimura, and Shirley Yamaguchi and Yoko Katsuragi are just as natural. Other than Shimura, Yamaguchi and Katsuragi, Scandal is made and directed with delicate skill, and the story, with quite a daring and personal subject matter, is always intense and engaging. The script is just as naturalistic and never stilted, the characters on the whole are well done especially Shimura's lawyer, the courtroom scene is compellingly played and the music while not one of the best ever scores for Kurosawa's films is fitting. All in all, not one of the master of Japanese cinema's best but still a film of interest. 8/10 Bethany Cox

Frequently neglected in comparison with his earlier works, this 1950 film provides a naturalistic look at conditions in post-war

Japan and hits on themes that seem oddly contemporary: the price of celebrity and the debate over the responsibility of a free

press

All the right characters are here: a pop star, a prominent artist, a seedy attorney, an unscrupulous gossip magazine publisher and the obligatory angelic daughter with tuberculosis! ItÕs even topped off with a climactic courtroom scene.

While Toshiro Mifune is the marquee name,Takashi Shimura, as the conflicted attorney Hiruta, is the star of this moral melodrama. His performance may seem excessive to some but he gets the great self condemning line that resonates today, ÒA bad lawyer is the worst scum.Ó

One trivia note: While Mifune and Shimura are among the better known members of KurosawaÕs stable, Scandal marks the debut of another familiar face, Bokuzen Hidari, as a drunk in a hostess bar belting out Auld Lang Syne

Kurosawa's Scandal is thus far my least favorite of all of his films. It tells the most kindergarten of yarns: Two celebrities accidentally meet during a holiday staying at the same hotel. In an easily misunderstood situation each other, tabloid photographers seek revenge on them for rejecting interviews by taking a picture of them and fabricating a love story about them. There is a scandal, and a lawsuit eventually battles the paparazzi. Despite Kurosawa's message pertaining to the post-war Americanization of Japan in terms of the media, could a single pop culture magazine dominate the entire media the way it's depicted to in the story?

The narrative is so clearcut and unsurprising with its message-obsessed subject, the good guys are practically perfect with complete humility and no character flaws and the bad guys are cocky jerks with no redeemable values.

It's not a terrible film, however. It is, after all, directed by Akira Kurosawa who, aside from showcasing an obvious scenario about the shrewdly dishonest media, explores the Japanese cultural perception of weakness. Weakness is something intolerable in Japanese culture, yet good enough people can understand a naturally weak person. Weakness is an organic part of someone. It comes from sensitivity, feelings of inferiority, harsh luck, all of which the character of the lawyer has, and as hard as it is for the surrounding characters to do, they understand it when he gives into weakness.

I prefer the last half of the movie by a landslide because it becomes more about the lawyer wrestling with his own guilt. It's a story that would never be found in an American film because of the cultural differences and how bound to accords the Japanese feel.

It is wonderful to see how a skilled director like Akira Kurosawa can create a masterwork from mundane material. This one is a simple court case over a "Scandal" involving Toshiro Mifune and a famous singer. A sandal sheet magazine publishes a photo claiming them as lovers ... they are not, and sue the magazine. The resulting court trial is the bulk of the film. Their sleazy lawyer played by Takashai Shimura is a delightful, complicated character. Completely absorbing.

This premiered in Japan only four months before "Rashômon" (1950), a film that marked a turn of events for Kurosawa, who, a year later in 1951, would find himself picking up the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival, his name henceforth on everyone's lips.

This marks an end of an era, then. It does pair up very well with "Yoidore tenshi" (1948) and "Nora inu" (1949), its immediate predecessors, but also with "Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru" (1960). All of these are scintillating depictions of urban Japan, but they all mark an acute sense of drama on the personal level: these are "small" films when compared to "Shichinin no samurai" (1954) and "Ran" (1985), for example, but Kurosawa, in these films, shows his strengths, and the great energetic intimacy that is prevalent in "Samurai", for example, quite possibly stems from the experience of making a film like this.

I have no idea why this is often overlooked as mere "early Kurosawa", as if that would somehow de-note a lesser film. His later masterpieces are great films, but the early films of his are amongst the most rewarding I know of. What's more, this film shares a great deal with "Rashômon" (1950) in meditating on truth and how that is and can be depicted on screen in the narrative. A brilliant film in all respects, and Mifune is as amazing as ever.