One of the pastimes of film enthusiasts is to rewind and look back at the origins of their favorite filmmakers. Take Kubrick’s first feature film, Fear and Desire. It isn’t very good, but that’s almost beside the point. Look to how shots are composed, how the action is choreographed, or, in a word, how the film is directed. Kubrick is finding his voice in the faded black and white images, and it’s thrilling to experience his slow self-discovery. Interesting also is looking back to Christopher Nolan’s debut film, Following, which follows an unlikely team of two young guys, one slimy and one slick. They break into people’s homes and philosophize on the consequences. You hear retroactive echoes of The Joker in some of these monologues, and how similar the texture and tone is to Nolan’s later films is uncanny. Plus, we can laugh at the ironic coincidence of a Batman symbol on one of the doors. Akira Kurosawa had been making films for five years before finding his footing as a filmmaker and artist, and it took all seven of his first films to make his breakthrough, his eighth film, Drunken Angel. The construction of the plot seems innocuous enough, with a story right out of a Hollywood melodrama (his reputation of using the tools of Hollywood rather than the tools of Japanese film increased over time). However, the goal of Drunken Angel and the goal of the Hollywood melodrama couldn’t be further apart with Kurosawa’s self-realizing script and direction.

The surface story is just that, the surface, and dramatic though it may be, a deep and twisted soul sits beneath. This was a film released in 1948, only a few years after the United States military dropped two atomic bombs in Japan. It was one of the first films ever made to confront the social, institutional, and moral collapse of Japan in its post-war years. The plot follows a worse for wear physician, Doctor Senada (played by Takashi Shimura, most famous for the party leader in Seven Samurai and the subject of Ikiru), that works in a crummy ramshackle office, who, like everyone else in town, has fallen on hard times. That is, everyone that isn’t a gangster. A small time crook, played by Kurosawa first timer Toshiro Mifune who went on to star in 16 of Kurosawa films following this one (many think it is the greatest actor-director partnership ever, I’m prone to agree), shows up at the physician’s office with a bullet in his hand and a thick cough. The doctor quickly realizes his cough might mean tuberculosis. It is there the plot begins, as danger befalls each major character.

The narrative unfolds in obvious melodramatic fashion, and even for audiences in 1948 the film’s finale would have been unambiguous from the mid-point. But Kurosawa stirs life into the story by the lyricism through which the story is told. For starters, despite being a film without a crime or much violence, Kurosawa spins it as a noir. Actors and sets are painted with deep shadow and high contrast, each shot meticulously framed. Like in a number of his later films, the images speak to the story with profound poetry. Sharp lines, either using elements of the set or with beams of light, frequently penetrate and cut through the characters. This is seen best during a visually dazzling satiric dance number at a night club. He also finds clever ways to accentuate depth, such as the classic noir use of deep focus photography, and saves most 3D-like effects for when characters are at their most desperate and full of despair. Close-ups are rare for this reason, but when they are used, it is to spectacular effect. Few use the close up better than Kurosawa, turning a mundane shot like the close up into a startling moment of visceral intensity and emotion.