4 out of 5 stars

A man lies prostrate, bleeding to death in a doorway. Fumbling, his hand darts out, reaching for his gun. The oppressive heat that bears down on Tokyo in 1949 means that even the night is intensely hot, and it would seem that the temperatures have driven people mad. But perhaps it’s not just the heatwave that has rendered this Tokyo suburb so strewn with violence. Maybe it’s indicative of something else, something far more insidiously pervasive—is this a country falling apart?

Detective Murakami (Toshiro Mifune) fears that may well be the case. After his gun is stolen, he strives to find the thief. However, it’s soon revealed the clock is ticking. The new gun owner is using the police firearm for evil: he’s killed once already and shows no signs of stopping. Detective Satō (Takashi Shimura), the seasoned cop assigned to help Murakami find the felon, believes they may be dealing with a fledgling serial killer: “A stray dog becomes a mad dog.”

In 1950, Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon premiered at the Venice Film Festival, revealing the richness of Japanese cinema to the world. However, only one year before the watershed moment of his career, Kurosawa crafted the dark gem Stray Dog / 野良犬, a brooding thriller, a philosophical neo-noir mystery. An underseen work from the much-acclaimed director’s oeuvre, Stray Dog showcases one of cinema’s most gifted contributors in the early days of his artistic greatness.

While Stray Dog may not reach the heights of Kurosawa’s best works, it’s still thoroughly enjoyable. It’s a classic pulp detective story, with a hard-boiled aesthetic and gritty mood. It’s also considered to be a pioneering entry into the buddy-cop subgenre. Some of the best sequences involve Murakami and Satō exchanging perspectives and sharing their opposing worldviews, elevating what might have become an otherwise humdrum police procedural with genuine introspection.

In addition to this, the drama is superb, with Toshiro Mifune demonstrating his patented theatrics with aplomb. Indeed, it’s his character—and stunning performance—which drives the narrative forward: it was his gun that was stolen. Causally speaking, if he’d been more careful, none of the ensuing violence would have happened. The guilt that plagues Detective Murakami over what he considers to be a drastic oversight on his part allows for insight into the film’s central theme: the fallacy of agency in a chaotic world.

How much can one mistake impact someone’s life? It’s a question that defined Francis Ford Coppola’s ground-breaking The Conversation (1974), with both Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) and Murakami agonising over how people were hurt due to their negligence, their lack of foresight. When Murakami discovers that victims of a shooting were struck down by the same gun that was stolen from his pocket, he’s distraught. Satō reassures him, attempting to persuade him the causal link is meaningless. After all, if the killer wasn’t using Murakami’s Colt, “He’d have used a Browning.”

This answer, unfortunately, brings Murakami no peace. As the results of more and more shootings are analysed in the ballistics lab, they each come back as a match. They try to assure themselves that the chaos must end at a certain point: “He has three bullets left…” But Murakami understands now more than ever how one mistake can lead to unfathomable results, how in a broken city, six bullets present endless permutations. He begins to buckle underneath the pressure: “I’m going to break down.” Satō stoically intones: “It seems you already have.”

The battle for order and stability in this Tokyo district is a microcosm of national angst. After the depravity of World War II, especially the horrors inflicted upon the Japanese populace in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many were questioning in which direction their country was heading. Under American Occupation, it seemed traditional values were being eroded, with criminality becoming widespread, like a virulent weed. It doesn’t just feel as though Murakami and Satō are desperately trying to prevent the killer from striking again, but trying to prevent their nation from falling into despair and anarchy.

This can also be seen in how adults venerate the next generation, resolving to protect them against all odds. As Satō looks upon babies sleeping peacefully, he smiles broadly: “Like a field of pumpkins.” It’s perhaps best dramatized through Harumi Namiki (Keiko Awaji), a young dancer who’s become infatuated with Yusa (Isao Kimura), the killer they’re trying to catch. Harumi’s mother (Eiko Miyoshi) is hysterical when she discovers her daughter’s associating with a criminal, fearing that she will spiral into a life of darkness. But as her Harumi reminds them all: “Bad people eat well, dress well—they’re the winners!”

And Yusa is revealed to be little more than a penniless street urchin. The detectives are disgusted by his house when they see it, with Satō proclaiming: “Dirt breeds evil.” He’s unsympathetic to Yusa, disinterested in the circumstances that may have caused him to take such extreme measures to escape poverty. But as Murakami elucidates: “There are no bad people—only bad environments.”

It’s similar to how the protagonists in Sergio Leone’s masterpiece Once Upon a Time in America (1984) behave so immorally: it’s learned behaviour, presented as the only means to escape an indefinite state of penury. Despite the heinous crimes Yusa has committed, Murakami cannot help but empathise with the boy who became a killer: “In a way, I’m sorry for Yusa…”  Yet, Satō vehemently disagrees: “We can’t afford to think like that. Don’t forget the many lambs killed by one wolf.”

The difference in opinions between these two detectives reveals a cultural shift; the national zeitgeist has changed, revealing a generation more pessimistic about society, one more forgiving of evil. After all, they have been surrounded by wickedness and sin for the majority of their formative years: having served in WWII, the après guerre generation has been traumatised and disillusioned. As Murakami divulges gravely: “In the war, I saw good men turn bad very easily…”

Perhaps this is why Murakami possesses such an unremittingly bleak outlook: he believes he is trying to instil justice in a broken world, to contain evil when anyone could succumb to it under the right circumstances. Much like in The Third Man (1949) of the same year, there’s an overpowering post-war gloom, a pervasive angst that things will only become worse. It seems a difficult perspective to argue. As criminals murder wantonly, destroying the lives of people they hurt for a minuscule sum, those left in their wake simply cannot fathom the senseless violence: “To steal only 50,000 Yen?!”

Today, that sum would amount to $2,267. A family destroyed, a life irrevocably ruined. Yet Satō believes that they can, and must, prevent people from losing their way: “A stray dog becomes a mad dog.” What does this line mean? Besides providing the film with its atmospheric title, it mysteriously evokes the film’s themes. Those without purpose, lost souls without a home to return to, will become depraved and lose a fundamental part of themselves, like a rabid cur. So they cannot afford to be nihilistic—they must stop the killer and reinforce order: “There’s no help for a cop who doesn’t believe he’s protecting the masses.”

Much like his first foray into this genre from the previous year in Drunken Angel (1948), Stray Dog would best be characterised as a neo-noir. Oscillating between torrential rain and sweltering heat, the weather serves as a pathetic fallacy and provides the film with plenty of mood. Dancers glisten with sweat, running upstairs and collapsing after a performance in total exhaustion. Satō looks eternally uncomfortable in the heat, squirming under his suit in the warmth, incapable of handling the climate quite as well as Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) does in the sun-drenched neo-noir classic Chinatown (1974).

And there are thrilling sequences in the film, too. Murakami following a suspect who refuses to cooperate becomes surprisingly tense. Similarly, as Satō and Murakami search for a suspect at a crowded baseball game, the suspense feels palpable. No doubt this sequence inspired director Juan José Campanella for a similar chase in The Secret in Their Eyes (2009). Of course, Campanella benefitted from 60 years of technological advances to make his chase far more intense, but Kurosawa’s succeeds in its own right.

One would be forgiven for thinking that this isn’t a Kurosawa film, as it doesn’t quite have the same feel as the period dramas for which he became so world-renowned. His jidaigeki Seven Samurai (1954), The Hidden Fortress (1958), and Sanjuro (1962) are often referenced as the films that made him such a sensation abroad, but the eclectic artist was capable of working within many genres, much like his contemporary Stanley Kubrick. Just as many have dismissed Eyes Wide Shut (1999) for not feeling like a Kubrick work, Stray Dog has largely gone unnoticed, perhaps because it’s not as commercially viable a film as his samurai epics.

However, it could also be because the film is far slower than some of his other films. Truthfully, the film certainly feels as though it could have been shorter, and the editor arguably should have cut some of the prologue. At a little over two hours, it’s not that the runtime is excessive, but that the pacing feels unjustifiably tepid in the beginning. However, the film eventually comes into its own, easily making up for the lost time.

Additionally, the film remains a visual treat. This probably should come as no surprise considering how Kurosawa spent a brief time as a painter, but it’s always enjoyable marvelling at the cinematography in his films. In short, the compositions are frequently stunning. Besides the shots that capture dramatic sequences as though it were a landscape of urban chaos, other camerawork feels rather innovative. In particular, Murakami’s focus on people’s feet, faces, and clothes in an early part of the story is transfixing. Cutting back and forth, with his eyes darting about and analysing suspects, the result is almost hallucinatory.

With an optimistic ending, Kurosawa’s film largely appears to make an argument that the future is a bright one, for his characters and his country. The mother throws Harumi’s dress out the window—she won’t allow the younger generation to fall into disrepute. In a single image, it seems apparent that the flock has been steered back onto the right path, leading them away from a spiral of scurrilous immorality.

I’m curious whether Kurosawa and fellow screenwriter Ryūzō Kikushima intended to have such an optimistic climax, or if it was due to pressures from censors. As the American Occupation enforced changes to Yasujirō Ozu’s seminal Late Spring (1949), I wonder if any oversight prevented the story from becoming unabatingly honest in its depiction of the post-war gloom in 1949 in Japan. Regardless of how the ending came about, the finale is satisfying: in a dark film populated by despairing characters, one man looks out the window, feeling he finally sees the first glimpses of light.

JAPAN | 1949 | 122 MINUTES | 1.37:1 | BLACK & WHITE | JAPANESE • FRENCH

frame rated divider retrospective

Cast & Crew

director: Akira Kurosawa.
writers: Akira Kurosawa & Ryūzō Kikushima.
starring: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Awaji, Noriko Sengoku, Noriko Honma, Eiko Miyoshi, Hajime Izu, Ichiro Sugai, Minoru Chiaki, Eijirō Tōno, Teruko Kishi, Iida Chōko & Reikichi Kawamura.