Rent Scandal (1950)

Kurosawa on storytelling form - Scandal review by AP

Having sat through "The Idiot" recently and found it pretentious and tedious, it was good to return to Kurosawa at his storytelling best.

Like "High and Low", "Scandal" is a drama, but whereas the later film is, I think, very intense and exhaustingly compelling, "Scandal" moves rather faster without losing any of its tension. Sometimes in his films I think Kurosawa allows himself overlong, lingering moments when protagonists have to make choices : there are some in "Scandal" which edge towards that, but I thought they pulled back just in time, and the changes in camera shots and angles helped avoid dullness.

"Scandal"'s story involves a painter, Mifune, who offers a woman he doesn't know, Yamaguchi, a lift on his motorbike from a beauty spot to a local inn where they both stay in separate rooms. Unknown to Mifune, Yamaguchi is a famous singer who is the constant target of the gutter press. She has come away from the city, hoping to avoid their attentions. Alas, they are hanging around and capture a photograph of her in an innocent pose with Mifune which, taken out of context, appears compromising. The photograph is published by a magazine clearly interested in exploiting Yamaguchi's celebrity status and not caring a fig about whether or not what they print is true. They rely on celebrities not wanting to sue them for fear of further publicity, expense, and a high likelihood that they do have not have enough evidence to disprove the magazine's claims.

Mifune, however, decides to sue and eventually persuades Yamaguchi to join him. They are represented by a lawyer, Shimura, who, drunk, presents himself to Mifune one night. Mifune takes him on: he, Mifune, is a man who is prepared to trust someone whom he recognizes as basically a good man, though, as the drama proceeds, his faith is sorely tested as we observe Shimura, who is not a successful practitioner, who has a daughter suffering from TB, and who drinks and gambles, fall prey to bribes from the magazine's editor.

That's the set up, and it's enhanced by a subplot involving both Mifune's compassion for the dying daughter and her father's love for her and sense of guilt that he has not the strength of character to look after her. Suffice it to say that, as is often the case with Kurosawa's films, there is a climactic moment of redemption, but it is impressively muted, enigmatic even, and avoids a fully resolved 'happy ending'. The drama is further maintained by our being encouraged constantly to wonder if Mifune is going to fall entirely either for either his co-defendant, Shimura's daughter, or his long-term model.

As the Cinema Paradiso information points out, the film is a lacerating attack on a part of the press that exploits privacy both recklessly and ruthlessly. He also, of course, recognizes that people fall for this stuff, and his use of witness statements during the trial emphasise this. "Scandal" rings as many bells today as it must have done in 1950. Furthermore, it is also interesting to see developing themes that are recognizable in Kurosawa's work as a whole: I found myself, for example, thinking of Mifune in "Red Beard" as his compassion and patient understanding of other people weaker than him was revealed, or in "The Bad Sleep Well" where his determination to right wrongs is the driving force of that film.