[March 23 1910, legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa was born. To celebrate the centennial of his life, his prolific contributions to the world of cinema, and immense impact on the hearts and minds of those quietly mourning his absence, staffers at Row Three are (rather enthusiastically) taking this opportunity to share their own experiences of the Kurosawa catalogue]

Kurosawa’s 1950 film, Scandal, is unfortunately little more than a ghastly weepie, a real low point in a period of the director’s career (1947-1954) which was otherwise marked with career-defining heights.

The directorial imprimatur of Message overtakes Scandal almost from the outset, as Kurosawa sets out to essay the deterioration of media morality in postwar Japan. His weapon of choice is the story of a libel suit against a tabloid by a young artist (Toshiro Mifune, who is so suave and debonair in this film that he’s a remark shy of James Bond) and a popular singer, who have been wrongly reported as being lovers.

The film fails to make any convincing drama of these characters, however, leaving them without depth or agency. Kurosawa prefers instead to focus on the plaintiffs’ bumbling lawyer, played by Takashi Shimura at his slovenly, toad-like best. Shimura’s terrific, but even he seems to know he hasn’t been given much to play, especially compared to his previous roles in Drunken Angel and Stray Dog. Here, as Hiruta, he attempts to play both sides of the legal conflict – his daughter is dying, and he needs money – but the movie-of-the-week flavour of the film rarely lifts, and Scandal runs out of gas about thirty minutes before its finale.

Kurosawa being Kurosawa, there are of course still lovely little moments, spread thin on the ground. The film reaches its emotional height when Shimura and Mifune head to a bar on New Year’s Eve, and the room full of wretched layabouts sing “Auld Lang Syne” to one another while Kurosawa dotes on each of their despairing, cautiously hopeful faces. Otherwise, this redemption tale is poorly done.

Scandal is available in Criterion’s lovely Postwar Kurosawa boxed set, under the Eclipse label.