The Quiet Duel

As in "Drunken Angel" this film uses illness as a allegory to symbolize Japanese society after WW2. Though not as powerful "The Quiet Duel" does have some fine moments. The beginning sequence is beautifully filmed. All the Kurosawa techniques are there. The play of light, the pounding rain storm, the purposefully annoying fan, and the haunting music give this intro stunning power and make the rest of the film rather pale in comparison. The acting at times tends to be a little melodramatic but the characters are convincing even if their motives are questionable. I won't go into details. I don't want to give the story away. This film contains what I think is one of the best scenes between Mifune and Shimura. It is the magical, simple, and poignant musical cigarette box scene. An interesting point....... Watch this and then watch "Drunken Angel". Many of the same sets and props were used. Shimura's office in "Drunken Angel" and Mifune's office in "The Quiet Duel" are almost identical.

An admonitory melodrama movingly sustained by splendid acting. Toshiro Mifune would later play a different sort of strong and silent character (John Wayne's an unworthy comparison). Here the silence is pulled inward, the head often drooped, the silence a wish not to offend. No wonder it's like the female characters are pounding on the door of this tall, handsome man when he cannot open himself to them. He's doing noble work as a physician, and fortunately the sombre story is sometimes lightened with patients grateful for cure, as it is in a way by his irresponsible double with whom he shares a probably incurable infection. Well set-up scenes often beautifully photographed, like the detail of rainwater dripping into a pan during a wartime jungle operation, coming after the surgeon has asked the patient's pulse to be monitored.

In 1944, in WWII, Dr. Kyoji Fujisaki (Toshirô Mifune) cuts his finger with the scalpel during a surgery in a field hospital and is infected by spirochete from his patient Susumu Nakada (Kenjiro Uemura). After the blood test, he realizes that he has contracted syphilis, but he does not have the necessary medicine to treat the disease. He advises Nakada to seek medical treatment for his disease. In 1946, after the war, he breaks off his six years engagement with his beloved fiancée Misao Matsumoto (Miki Sanjo) but he does not tell the truth to her to let her go and find another man to get married. The hopeless apprentice nurse Rui Minegishi (Noriko Sengoku) witnesses Kioji injecting Salvarsan to treat his syphilis, and first she misunderstands why the doctor is sick. Later, after discovering the truth about his disease, she changes her behavior and becomes the confident listener of the doctor's inner feelings. When Kyoji accidentally meets Nakada in the police station of his town and finds that his wife is pregnant, he warns the reckless man about the risk of his lack of responsibility to his wife and baby.

"Shizukanaru Ketto" is a little and quite unknown gem from Master Akira Kurosawa, with a heartbreaking tale about the inner duel between conscience and desire of a pure and good doctor contaminated by a corrupt and dirty patient. Like in "Yoidore Tenshi" ("Drunken Angel") from the previous year, the story may be also interpreted in a metaphoric sense that reflects the moment of after-war society in Japan, where "a pure man is contaminated by the dirtiness and only three, five or ten years later he will be healed after a long treatment". The strong code of honor of Japanese people in the 40's explains the shame that would be for Dr. Fyoji to disclose that he had the dishonored syphilis. His sacrifice, hiding the truth from Misao, to give a chance to his twenty-seven year-old fiancée to find another husband is awesome. But the emotional scene when Kyoji discloses his feelings to Minegishi made my eyes wet, and is one of the most heartbreaking dialogs I have seen in a classic movie. Last but not the least; the story never becomes a melodramatic soap-opera due to the superb direction of Mr. Kurosawa. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Duelo Silencioso" ("Silent Duel")

I find Akira Kurasawa to be not just the Master of Japanese cinema but also one of the all-time great directors. The Silent Duel is not one of the finest examples of why I think that, I do think it could've been longer and I did feel that the narrative while having a great idea and having some very moving moments especially in the final act has some clumsy patches. However, it is delicately directed and is made absolutely beautifully with well-compositioned cinematography and striking scenery. The score has a haunting sense of coolness, while the acting is excellent. Toshiro Mifune would give more remarkable performances in other Kurosawa films with characters more multi-layered than here, however he does play noble very well. Takashi Shimura would later give one of the most heartbreaking performances in all of film in Ikiru, but gives a likewise commanding performance. Norika Serigoku is also wonderful, her character is annoying at first but you do warm to her later on, and Serigoku where self-absorbed or touching does convey those characteristics very well. In a nutshell, Kurosawa has done better in my view, but I found much still to be impressed about. 8/10 Bethany Cox

The Quiet Duel features Mifune's second role for Kurosawa, as a young doctor who contracts syphilis from operating on a patient in WWII South Pacific. This alone constitutes the opening and perhaps most riveting sequence of the film. In the little shack where the operation take place, effects of irritation and discomfort hit a high note with the leaking roof, pestering flies, and assaulting humidity. This shabby condition breaks Mifune's concentration and leads him to cut himself in the patient's infected blood. There is much beautiful play of light and shadow across the virginal white uniforms of the doctors.

When Mifune goes back to his father's (Takashi Shimura) medical practice in Japan after the war, the film staggers in cajoling our empathy for the hero's incredulous dilemma: How to protect his fiancee - whom he has kept waiting for six years during the war - from the syphilis he contracted abroad, yet to be honest with himself and his own physical desires. The movie strives to be the tragic love story of a sexually unfulfilled man, an Unjustifiably Tainted Virgin who pains in silence. He is so saintly that his self-denial (abstinence) inspires a single mother (Noriko Sengoku) to become a certified nurse. Despite relatively good performance from the actors, the story of a saintly individual done wrong by a disease that is symbolically social restricts itself to melodramatic proportions.

Thankfully, there is a subplot involving the patient, aka the agent of Doctor Mifune's syphilis. As irresponsible (and promiscuous) as he is, he gives syphilis to his own wife and this ends ups killing their first born. The wife is a victim in the sense that Mifune contracted his disease, and much of Kurosawa's famed humanism involves the wife's recovery from her stillborn and the promise of her eventually ridding syphilis.

This film was made just after several labor strikes broke out at Toho, Kurosawa's home studio. The strikes had devastating effects on the unity and creative synergy of film talents in Japan then, and Kurosawa made this '49 film under Daiei-- with a relatively inexperienced production unit and using a contemporary stageplay that would not alienate moviegoers. The result is vastly uneven, aside from the fantastic opening that is classic Kurosawa. Further, this film continues the cultivation of a Kurosawa-obsession: that of a saintly doctor who, despite his own faults, tries to be his most honest with the world. This can be first seen in Drunken Angel's Dr. Sanada, and later - most memorably - in Red Beard's Akahige/Dr.Niide.