Although rather weak
compared to his later
work, this
early period piece shows hints of what would
come for the great artist.
It is fair to say that I am huge fan of director Akira Kurosawa. This however marks my first foray into the director's early work, perhaps the least discussed period of the filmmaker's entire career. Despite being ignored by many, from what I have read almost every film in this period is subject to polarising opinions from fans and critics alike. This film for example has been called Kurosawa's weakest film by Tony Zhou (a Youtube film critic that I am a huge fan of), and one of his best early offerings by Stuart Galbraith IV, the author of a highly extensive biography of the director. So now it is time for me to offer my own thoughts on this polarising film.
For a start it is worth noting that this film was made at the height of the second world war, and as such amidst terrible working/living conditions. This sadly shows in the final film, which was clearly filmed entirely on a fairly cheap sound stage. Furthermore, the audio quality itself is sometimes quite poor. Holding these shaky elements against the film feels unfair, however it does still negatively impact the film's attempt to create an authentic period setting.
To counter the films weak technical elements, it boasts a simple yet elegant screenplay. The story is one of honour, loyalty and the lengths one must go to in order to fulfil their duty. It is a compelling tale, and it held my interest throughout. However this may have been aided by the film's slim running time, so short that I doubt it is even possible to lose interest before the end. I do give the film credit for telling a fairly epic story despite this limit running time, establishing the backstory efficiently in an opening narration and leaving just enough breathing room to establish some personality within the characters, although it is still fairly minimal in the scheme of things. Overall, I feel this film's narrative is one of it's better elements and I praise the film for it's efficient, although far from spectacular, storytelling.
The film's cinematography is quite fantastic in my view. This early in his career Kurosawa had already learned how to keep a film engaging through simple camera moves and story enhancing shot compositions. Alongside the film's phenomenal editing, which is beautifully paced and constantly interesting from start to finish, I would certainly recommend watching this film in particular if you want to know how to enhance a film's impact through cuts and shots alone.
So far I have described some of the film's strongest elements, however things fall apart in when I move onto the subject of the lead performances. For some strange reason, although the narrative has a clearly defined main character, the film adds a comedic relief character
who was not present in the films source material. This character dominates the screen for huge chunks of the film, and I found him insufferable. The actor mugs and overacts in way which I did not even think possible, and is clear to me that Kurosawa did not know how to integrate this guy into the story properly. This comedic character legitimately ruins parts of the film for me, his presence is truly baffling.
Outside of the terrible comedic elements, Denjirô Ôkôchi is excellent as the lead despite being pushed aside, and his ability to hold the viewers eye is really quite remarkable. Furthermore, Takeshi Shimura and Masayuki Mori appear in two very minor roles. They do very little, however it is nice to see two of Kurosawa's greatest collaborators lending their talents in the background. To be bold, one could even call Shimura's performance here a very early prototype to his work on Seven Samurai, as I saw the same gravity and dignity here that made that performance so sublime.
In the end, this film should probably best be remembered as an interesting little experiment from Kurosawa's early career. Many of his talents were honed in this film, and judging by the relative lack of comedic relief in his later films it is safe to assume that the director identified some of his weaknesses. Hardly a masterwork, but still certainly worth seeing for hardcore fans of Kurosawa.
By Jack D. Phillips
A Zoom Film Review
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