The Silent Duel (1949)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Film Review

Akira Kurosawa's follow-up to his stylish crime-thriller Drunken Angel (1948) is a surprisingly low-key affair, a modest hospital melodrama which shows little of the director's customary cinematic bravura and is consequently all too easily overlooked.  Adapted from a stage play by the acclaimed Japanese playwright Kazuo Kikuta, The Silent Duel would appear to fit more easily into the filmography of more traditional Japanese filmmakers, Ozu or Mizoguchi, than Kurosawa's.  The director's use of long static takes and theatrical blocking accentuates the film's staginess, but this approach is undoubtedly the right one for a film which is focused so intensely on a man's inner struggle to reconcile his conscience with his desire - the duel referred to in the title.  Made when Japan was under American occupation, the film's frequent references to a perfect body being polluted by a shameful disease can be read as a veiled allusion to a nation's shame of having to live under the control of a foreign power.

After their first successful collaboration on Drunken Angel, Kurosawa had few reservations over giving Toshirô Mifune the lead role in The Silent Duel.  It was a daring piece of casting as Mifune is clearly far better suited for tough action man roles than those which demand quiet introspection (as is evident in his later work for Kurosawa).  Whilst Mifune is certainly not the obvious casting choice for the part of a conscience-stricken medical man, his performance is hard to fault, arguably one of his best, remarkable when you consider that this is only his second major role.  By containing his energy within his powerful frame and by suppressing his emotions beneath a mask of apparent placidity, Mifune gives a very credible portrayal of a man who has, by necessity, grown accustomed to keeping his feelings from public gaze.  In the scene in which his character finally breaks down and has his frustration and anger dragged out of him, Mifune is harrowingly convincing.  Mifune's success in this role may have been what prompted Kurosawa to cast him as another medical man (albeit a grouchier and older version) in Red Beard (1965), the last film on which the two worked together.

Toshirô Mifune may dominate the film with his extraordinary physical presence but his is not the only creditable performance.  Takashi Shimura, another favourite of Kurosawa, is cast as Mifune's father (perhaps bizarrely, as the two actors could hardly be more different) and turns in another of his captivating character performances.  Shimura's main scene with Mifune, in which the latter's character reveals he has syphilis, exploits magnificently the difference in the persona and acting styles of the two men and is arguably the most poignant in the entire film.   No wonder Kurosawa cast them together in roles having a similar kind of father-son relationship in Seven Samurai (1954).   Also worthy of a mention are the two principal actresses, Miki Sanjô and Noriko Sengoku, who are both given strong, sympathetic female roles - which is unusual for Kurosawa, who was famous for his ambivalence towards female characters.

In the hands of a less capable director, The Silent Duel could easily have been a plodding, lachrymose melodrama, the Japanese equivalent of the worst kind of Hollywood weepy.  Whilst melodrama is hardly his forte, Kurosawa handles the subject with compassion and sensitivity, deftly offsetting the film's darker passages with some badly needed moments of light relief.  Occasionally, the film does drift a little too close to mawkishness, but this is more a fault of Kikuta's somewhat dated play than a reflection of the performances or direction, which are never less than impeccably sincere.  The film was to have had a much bleaker ending, with the central character finally losing his sanity, but the American censors intervened at the script-writing stage and the dramatic denouement was sadly lost.  In spite of this, the film holds up remarkably well, definitely not in the same league as Kurosawa's later masterpieces, but nonetheless a humane and moving little drama - and a genuine eye-opener for anyone who reckons Toshirô Mifune can only play sword-wielding action heroes.

Film Synopsis

During WWII, a young doctor named Kyoji Fujisaki contracts syphilis whilst performing an operation on an infected patient.  Two years later, Kyoji is working in his father's practice, a committed and well-respected surgeon.  Aware that he still has syphilis, he is unable to marry the woman he loves, and such is the stigma surrounding the disease that he cannot even admit that he has it to his father or his fiancée.  In the end, Kyoji has no choice but to reveal this terrible truth, and, heartbroken, his fiancée marries another man.  By chance, Kyoji has a second encounter with Nakada, the man who infected him, and learns that his wife is pregnant.  Fearing that Nakada may have passed his disease onto his wife and his unborn child, Kyoji insists that the pregnant woman be examined in his clinic.  Nakada refuses and a bitter enmity develops between the two men...