Playing Shakespeare

Takashi Shimura is impressive in this slightly squalid tale of a dipsomaniac doctor ("Sanada") charged with caring for a population housed in a bombed out part of the city. A large stagnant pond amidst their community is as likely to prove a source of toxicity as the pervading Yakuza activities. Those centre around "Matsunaga" (Toshirô Mifune) who turns up at the surgery with an injured hand. The doctor treats the wound but also suggest that the man might want to get treated for what he suspects is a case of tuberculosis. The two men fight - verbally and physically - and things continue to worsen when his boss "Okada" (Reizaburô Yamamoto) gets out of prison and starts to reassert his authority amongst the shopkeepers. Despite the initial hostility, Kurosawa manages to generate a considerable degree of amity between the two men as the story progresses. It is a friendship - of sorts - borne out of frustration and a desire to drink a great deal, and that dynamic becomes more engaging as the inevitability of parts of the story become ever clearer. There is some lovely guitar accompaniment to Fumio Hayasaka's score and the dialogue sparingly but convincingly guides us along as these two opposites start to attract. It is tightly paced with plenty of action as well as engendering, for me anyway, quite a degree of sympathy for the physician caught in a maelstrom of despair that is as much self-induced as anything.