Scandal (1950)
Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Film Review

Scandal was the film that director Akira Kurosawa made immediately before Rashomon, the film that first brought him international renown.  In common with most of Kurosawa's work up until this point, it has a contemporary setting and deals with important social themes that greatly preoccupied the director.  Kurosawa described Scandal as a protest film, and it isn't too hard to see what he is protesting about: the rise of sensationalist journalism which had come about through the liberalising influence of the American occupation following Japan's defeat in the Pacific War.  Kurosawa was motivated to make the film after he himself had been the victim of tabloid tittle-tattle and, judging by the film's bitterly acerbic tone and its mordant characterisation of newspaper owners and journalists as morally vacuous sensation-seekers, you can well imagine that the experience had touched a raw nerve.

Yet Scandal isn't just an attack on the seamier aspects of tabloid journalism (of the kind that still continues to blight the lives of celebrities and public figures); it clearly has a wider purpose, bemoaning the way in which western (in particular American) influences were fast eroding traditional Japanese values and customs.  The centrepiece of the film is an extended montage sequence depicting a typical American-style Christmas.  The sequence begins with the central protagonist (played by Toshirô Mifune) carrying a lavishly decorated Christmas tree on his motorcycle through a slum area, pursued by an ecstatic gang of children.   A joyful orchestral rendition of Jingle Bells accompanies the sequence, preparing us for the massive overdose of Hollywood-style schmaltz that is about to come our way, to the accompaniment of choruses of Silent Night and Auld Langs Syne (mercifully sung in Japanese).  The sentimentality is built up to a ludicrous pitch and you can easily imagine Kurosawa shouting at us, just out of shot: Is this really what you want to watch - soulless sentimental pap like this?

Anyone not familiar with Kurosawa's work and his keenly developed sense of irony might think he was simply emulating the worst kind of Hollywood melodrama for the sake of it (if not for cynical commercial gain).  In fact what Kurosawa is really doing is exposing the genre's superficiality and inadequacies as a popular art form.  This is perhaps deeply ironic for the Japanese film director who was most influenced by western cinema and who would frequently draw on the work of American and European filmmakers for most of his career.  What Kurosawa is primarily objecting to in Scandal is the lack of discernment his fellow countrymen are showing as they rush to embrace western cultural influences, and the most egregious example of this was the spectacular growth in tabloid journalism, which was feeding on the public's appetite for sensation like some rampant Godzilla-like monstrosity.  The opening caption puts it succinctly: 'All honour has been cast to the winds, unless it can be converted into cold cash.'

Perhaps because Kurosawa was so emotionally involved in the subject, Scandal lacks the subtlety and power of his subsequent satirical pieces, although technically it is as imaginatively crafted and daring as much of the director's later films.  The creative highpoint has to be the climactic trial sequence (the one and only courtroom scene to feature in a Kurosawa film), which is a masterpiece of staging and composition, deftly alternating between farce and nerve-wracking tension.  Kurosawa keeps his audience in suspense until the last possible moment, at which point we realise that the film is as much about one man's agonising march towards salvation as it is a satire on celebrity journalism.

The film is, in some respects, a dry run for Kurosawa's subsequent masterpiece Ikiru (1952), another powerful tale of personal redemption.  In both films, the hero is a pathetic specimen of humanity (in Scandal, a corrupt lawyer; in Ikiru, an ossified bureaucrat) who experiences a dramatic, totally unexpected spiritual rebirth, but at a huge personal price.  In each case, the character is played magnificently by Takashi Shimura, a regular in Kurosawa's films and, arguably, the finest Japanese screen actor of his generation.   Although Toshirô Mifune is nominally the star of the film, it is Shimura who soon steals the focus from him and dominates the second half of the film, so expressively does he convey the inner struggle, the conflict between self-interest and social worth.  Despite his comical, almost Chaplinesque appearance, Shimura's portrayal of the corrupt lawyer Hiruta is devastating in its humanity and authenticity, and no less poignantly rendered than his subsequent triumph in Ikiru.

Film Synopsis

In present day Japan, Ichiro Aoye is an artist who makes the fatal mistake of offering a lift on his motorcycle to a famous singer, Miyako Saijo.  A pack of photographers are offended when Saijo refuses to give them an interview and take their revenge by taking a surreptitious snap of her whilst she is chatting innocently in her hotel room with Ichiro.  The editors on the scurrilous celebrity magazine Amour have no qualms over publishing the damning photograph with a headline which leaves no doubt that Aoye is Saijo's new lover.   The artist is naturally outraged and threatens to sue the magazine.  A down-at-heel lawyer named Hiruta offers his services to Aoye and the latter agrees to employ him when he realises that he desperately needs money to buy treatment for his consumptive daughter Masako.  What Aoye does not know is that Hiruta has no scruples over where he gets his money from and willingly accepts a bribe from the magazine owners to weaken the plaintiff's case.   As the trial approaches its climax, it looks as if Aoye is about to suffer a resounding defeat...