A popular singer and an artist, staying at a resort, have their pictures taken together on the balcony of the singer's room and are accused of engaging in a torrid affair by a scandal sheet. They sue the rag. "Ripped from today's headlines"? No--it's the plot of Akira Kurosawa's 1950 movie, Scandal.
This sort of story, of course, was going on in the U.S. too, particularly with Confidential magazine, lawsuits against it eventually putting it out of business. It's fascinating to see it happening in Japan as well. In fact, they did not even have an equivalent for the word "scandal": they use the English word. The entire movie is about the influence of the West on Japan, after five years of Occupation.
Takashi Shimura (to the right in the still) plays the alcoholic lawyer who approaches the artist (played by a young-looking Toshiro Mifune) to sue the magazine, Amour (its title is another example of Western inroads). He has a daughter who is suffering from T.B., and the prelude to the climax of the movie occurs at Christmas, when Mifune brings a fully decorated Christmas tree for the daughter on the back of his motorcycle (when the neighborhood kids ask him who he is, he replies, "Santa Krausis!") When Shimura comes home drunk that night, his daughter is being serenaded by the singer (with Mifune on organ) performing "Silent Night." He runs out to a tavern, Mifune following, where a band is playing "Buttons and Bows," and later on, the entire tavern joins together in a drunken chorus of "Auld Lang Syne." Is all this Westernization good or bad? As far as the possibility of "scandal" goes, yes. Does this mean the same for Christmas and New Year's?
Four months later, Rashomon debuted, and Japanese cinema became widely known in the Western world. Mifune and Kurosawa would go on to one of the greatest collaborations in the history of cinema (Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, High and Low, Yojimbo, Red Beard), but this early movie shows that the influence of the West, while inspiring in its cinematic aspect, also brought dangers to Japan for which they had no words to express.
Takashi Shimura (to the right in the still) plays the alcoholic lawyer who approaches the artist (played by a young-looking Toshiro Mifune) to sue the magazine, Amour (its title is another example of Western inroads). He has a daughter who is suffering from T.B., and the prelude to the climax of the movie occurs at Christmas, when Mifune brings a fully decorated Christmas tree for the daughter on the back of his motorcycle (when the neighborhood kids ask him who he is, he replies, "Santa Krausis!") When Shimura comes home drunk that night, his daughter is being serenaded by the singer (with Mifune on organ) performing "Silent Night." He runs out to a tavern, Mifune following, where a band is playing "Buttons and Bows," and later on, the entire tavern joins together in a drunken chorus of "Auld Lang Syne." Is all this Westernization good or bad? As far as the possibility of "scandal" goes, yes. Does this mean the same for Christmas and New Year's?
Four months later, Rashomon debuted, and Japanese cinema became widely known in the Western world. Mifune and Kurosawa would go on to one of the greatest collaborations in the history of cinema (Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, High and Low, Yojimbo, Red Beard), but this early movie shows that the influence of the West, while inspiring in its cinematic aspect, also brought dangers to Japan for which they had no words to express.
