The Quiet Duel (1949) [Repost]

Kyoji Fujisaki (Akira Kurosawa) contracts syphilis from a patient while working as doctor during the war. After the war he hides his disease while he takes medication to help remove it from his body forever. Kyoji continues to practice medicine with his father at the clinic his family owns. One day while helping a police officer who was injured Kyoji runs into Susumu Nakada the man who gave him syphilis. He insists that he was cured and that his wife and son to be child where not affected. Kyoji announced at Nakada’s recklessness convinces the man to have his wife stop by and be checked out. Misao is a young woman who is in love with Kyoji and she has waited for him to get back from the war so they can be married. Kyoji still very much in love with her doesn’t want her to contract his syphilis so he pushes her away into the arms of another man.

Many of the greatest directors have had an actor who has inspired their muse to fullest and the two from that moment onward are forever linked. The Quiet Duel would mark the second of sixteen collaborations between Akira Kurosawa and Toshirô Mifune over the course of twenty eight years. What is even more impressive that during this stretch is that Akira Kurosawa would only make one films without Toshirô Mifune his 1952 film Ikiru.

The Quiet Duel has all the style and signature techniques that later Akira Kurosawa films would use to even greater effect. The acting all around is superb with Toshirô Mifune and Takashi Shimura both giving brilliant performances as a son and a father. The real star of the show is actress Noriko Sengoku who just the previous year before made her feature film debut in Akira Kurosawa’s Drunken Angel. In the Quite Duel Noriko Sengoku plays the fragile yet tough as nails Rui Minegishi whose man left her with child and forces her to become more responsible. The films score which is sparse and virtually non existent for most of the film gives the rest of the films ambient sounds a chance to come forward which really enhances the film overall.

The films premise on the surface appears outdated that is until you substitute syphilis for a more modern plague like aids. The film is in many ways about choices and living with them. Kyoji took the more painful route of solitude instead of carrying on like nothing happened just to satisfy his pent up sexual desires for Misao. The film succeeds mostly because Kyoji takes the high road to keep the woman he loves out of harms way and in the process isolating him from those who care about him. Akira Kurosawa is the most celebrated director in the history of Japanese cinema and even though he has made several undeniable classics. He has also made a handful of lesser films like The Quiet Duel that if they were made by just about anyone else they would be held in higher regard.

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In 1944, in WWII, Dr. Kyoji Fujisaki (Toshirô Mifune) cuts his finger with the scalpel during a surgery in a field hospital and is infected by spirochete from his patient Susumu Nakada (Kenjiro Uemura). After the blood test, he realizes that he has contracted syphilis, but he does not have the necessary medicine to treat the disease. He advises Nakada to seek medical treatment for his disease. In 1946, after the war, he breaks off his six years engagement with his beloved fiancée Misao Matsumoto (Miki Sanjo) but he does not tell the truth to her to let her go and find another man to get married. The hopeless apprentice nurse Rui Minegishi (Noriko Sengoku) witnesses Kioji injecting Salvarsan to treat his syphilis, and first she misunderstands why the doctor is sick. Later, after discovering the truth about his disease, she changes her behavior and becomes the confident listener of the doctor's inner feelings. When Kyoji accidentally meets Nakada in the police station of his town and finds that his wife is pregnant, he warns the reckless man about the risk of his lack of responsibility to his wife and baby.

"Shizukanaru Ketto" is a little and quite unknown gem from Master Akira Kurosawa, with a heartbreaking tale about the inner duel between conscience and desire of a pure and good doctor contaminated by a corrupt and dirty patient. Like in "Yoidore Tenshi" ("Drunken Angel") from the previous year, the story may be also interpreted in a metaphoric sense that reflects the moment of after-war society in Japan, where "a pure man is contaminated by the dirtiness and only three, five or ten years later he will be healed after a long treatment". The strong code of honor of Japanese people in the 40's explains the shame that would be for Dr. Fyoji to disclose that he had the dishonored syphilis. His sacrifice, hiding the truth from Misao, to give a chance to his twenty-seven year-old fiancée to find another husband is awesome. But the emotional scene when Kyoji discloses his feelings to Minegishi made my eyes wet, and is one of the most heartbreaking dialogs I have seen in a classic movie. Last but not the least; the story never becomes a melodramatic soap-opera due to the superb direction of Mr. Kurosawa. My vote is nine.

IMDB Reviewer

Special Features:
- Original Japanese theatrical trailer (2:09)
- News Reel from the set of the movie (2:09)
- Interviews with cinematographer Setsuo Kobayashi, actress Miki Sanjo and composer Akira Ifukube (46:38)
- Photo Gallery (33 images)