Film Review
Scandal was the film that
director Akira Kurosawa made immediately before
Rashomon,
the film that first brought him international renown. In common
with most of Kurosawa's work up until this point, it has a contemporary
setting and deals with important social themes that greatly preoccupied
the director. Kurosawa described
Scandal as a protest film, and it
isn't too hard to see what he is protesting about: the rise of
sensationalist journalism which had come about through the liberalising
influence of the American occupation following Japan's defeat in the
Pacific War. Kurosawa was motivated to make the film after he
himself had been the victim of tabloid tittle-tattle and, judging by
the film's bitterly acerbic tone and its mordant characterisation of
newspaper owners and journalists as morally vacuous sensation-seekers,
you can well imagine that the experience had touched a raw nerve.
Yet
Scandal isn't just an
attack on the seamier aspects of tabloid journalism (of the kind that
still continues to blight the lives of celebrities and public figures);
it clearly has a wider purpose, bemoaning the way in which western (in
particular American) influences were fast eroding traditional Japanese
values and customs. The centrepiece of the film is an extended
montage sequence depicting a typical American-style Christmas.
The sequence begins with the central protagonist (played by
Toshirô Mifune) carrying a lavishly decorated Christmas tree on
his motorcycle through a slum area, pursued by an ecstatic gang of
children. A joyful orchestral rendition of
Jingle Bells accompanies the
sequence, preparing us for the massive overdose of Hollywood-style
schmaltz that is about to come our way, to the accompaniment of
choruses of
Silent Night and
Auld Langs Syne (mercifully sung in
Japanese). The sentimentality is built up to a ludicrous pitch
and you can easily imagine Kurosawa shouting at us, just out of
shot: Is this really what you want to watch - soulless sentimental pap
like this?
Anyone not familiar with Kurosawa's work and his keenly developed sense
of irony might think he was simply emulating the worst kind of
Hollywood melodrama for the sake of it (if not for cynical commercial
gain). In fact what Kurosawa is really doing is
exposing the genre's superficiality and inadequacies as a popular art
form.
This is perhaps deeply ironic for the Japanese film director who was most
influenced by western cinema and who would frequently draw on the work
of American and European filmmakers for most of his career.
What Kurosawa is primarily objecting to in
Scandal
is the lack of discernment his fellow countrymen are showing as they
rush to embrace western cultural influences, and the most egregious
example of this was the spectacular growth in tabloid journalism,
which was feeding on the public's appetite for sensation like some
rampant Godzilla-like monstrosity. The opening caption puts it
succinctly: 'All honour has been cast to the winds, unless it can be
converted into cold cash.'
Perhaps because Kurosawa was so emotionally involved in the subject,
Scandal lacks the subtlety and
power of his subsequent satirical pieces, although technically it is as
imaginatively crafted and daring as much of the director's later
films. The creative highpoint has to be the climactic trial
sequence (the one and only courtroom scene to feature in a Kurosawa
film), which is a masterpiece of staging and composition, deftly
alternating between farce and nerve-wracking tension. Kurosawa
keeps his audience in suspense until the last possible moment, at which
point we realise that the film is as much about one man's agonising
march towards salvation as it is a satire on celebrity
journalism.
The film is, in some respects, a dry run for Kurosawa's subsequent
masterpiece
Ikiru (1952), another powerful
tale of personal redemption. In both films, the hero is a
pathetic specimen of humanity (in
Scandal,
a corrupt lawyer; in
Ikiru,
an ossified bureaucrat) who experiences a dramatic, totally unexpected
spiritual rebirth, but at a huge personal price. In each case,
the character is played magnificently by Takashi Shimura, a regular in
Kurosawa's films and, arguably, the finest Japanese screen actor of his
generation. Although Toshirô Mifune is nominally the
star of the film, it is Shimura who soon steals the focus from him and
dominates the second half of the film, so expressively does he convey
the inner struggle, the conflict between self-interest and social
worth. Despite his comical, almost Chaplinesque appearance,
Shimura's portrayal of the corrupt lawyer Hiruta is devastating in its
humanity and authenticity, and no less poignantly rendered than his
subsequent triumph in
Ikiru.
© James Travers 2012
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Next Akira Kurosawa film:
The Idiot (1951)
Film Synopsis
In present day Japan, Ichiro Aoye is an artist who makes the fatal
mistake of offering a lift on his motorcycle to a famous singer, Miyako
Saijo. A pack of photographers are offended when Saijo refuses to
give them an interview and take their revenge by taking a surreptitious
snap of her whilst she is chatting innocently in her hotel room with
Ichiro. The editors on the scurrilous celebrity magazine
Amour have no qualms over
publishing the damning photograph with a headline which leaves no doubt
that Aoye is Saijo's new lover. The artist is naturally
outraged and threatens to sue the magazine. A down-at-heel lawyer
named Hiruta offers his services to Aoye and the latter agrees to
employ him when he realises that he desperately needs money to buy
treatment for his consumptive daughter Masako. What Aoye does not
know is that Hiruta has no scruples over where he gets his money from
and willingly accepts a bribe from the magazine owners to weaken the
plaintiff's case. As the trial approaches its climax, it
looks as if Aoye is about to suffer a resounding defeat...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.