Taking a look online for reviews about the Criterion AK 100: 25 Films by Akira Kurosawa which I have,I discovered that the set did not contain a handful of works by the film maker. Tracking down the title,I got set to see the duel take place.
View on the film:
Lashing the hospital doors shut with his distinctive gusts of wind and heavy rain pounding the hospital roof, with Godzilla (1954) composer Akira Ifukube having a lone, heart beat drum thump in time, co-writer/(with Senkichi Taniguchi) directing auteur Akira Kurosawa & cinematographer Soichi Aisaka get under the knife of Dr. Kyoji with Kurosawa's unique screen-wipes cutting deep into zoom-ins on anxious face.
Whilst keeping the majority of the film confine to one location does create a detached,closed-off atmosphere, Kurosawa reflects Kyoji (played with a great rough-edge gravitas by Toshiro Mifune) keeping his illness secret, with excellent, distorted panning shots holding the audience, and those who want to be most close to him, from getting to enter Kyoji's personal space.
Building on Dr. Sanada treating Matsunaga for tuberculosis in Drunken Angel, (1948-also reviewed) the adaptation by Kurosawa and Taniguchi of Kazuo Kikuta's play, never fully departs from the stage-bound origins,with Kyoji's quiet, painful battle with syphilis after getting it from a patient, being one where as the years go by, (a flexibility of time lines being a recurring motif of Kurosawa) he closes himself off to feelings of friendship or desire,as Dr. Kyoji faces this quiet duel alone.
View on the film:
Lashing the hospital doors shut with his distinctive gusts of wind and heavy rain pounding the hospital roof, with Godzilla (1954) composer Akira Ifukube having a lone, heart beat drum thump in time, co-writer/(with Senkichi Taniguchi) directing auteur Akira Kurosawa & cinematographer Soichi Aisaka get under the knife of Dr. Kyoji with Kurosawa's unique screen-wipes cutting deep into zoom-ins on anxious face.
Whilst keeping the majority of the film confine to one location does create a detached,closed-off atmosphere, Kurosawa reflects Kyoji (played with a great rough-edge gravitas by Toshiro Mifune) keeping his illness secret, with excellent, distorted panning shots holding the audience, and those who want to be most close to him, from getting to enter Kyoji's personal space.
Building on Dr. Sanada treating Matsunaga for tuberculosis in Drunken Angel, (1948-also reviewed) the adaptation by Kurosawa and Taniguchi of Kazuo Kikuta's play, never fully departs from the stage-bound origins,with Kyoji's quiet, painful battle with syphilis after getting it from a patient, being one where as the years go by, (a flexibility of time lines being a recurring motif of Kurosawa) he closes himself off to feelings of friendship or desire,as Dr. Kyoji faces this quiet duel alone.