Classic Movies: The Quiet Duel (1949)

By Jason Haskins

I have seen many of Kurosawa's films from Madadayo (his swan song) to Red Beard and my personal favorite, Rashomon, but I was very unfamiliar with his earlier efforts from the beginning of his career-from the forties to the early fifties--so I took it upon myself to watch one of his films I've been dying to see: The Quiet Duel (1949).

The Quiet Duel follows a doctor who, upon contracting syphilis in a wartime surgery, returns home after the war to help at his father's clinic-keeping his disease a secret from his fiancé and his father alike. But when the man who gave him syphilis returns back into the picture, the doctor must choose whether or not to keep his illness a secret or force the man to take responsibility for his life and the lives of his wife and unborn child.

This movie has a lot of in common with Red Beard as both take place at clinics with doctors as the lead characters and both have more mellow story lines that aren't full of epic, grandiose scenes seen in his samurai films like Seven Samurai or Yojimbo/Sanjuro. While it's not full of action per se, it has a lot of drama and depth that make it quite rich, both from a script standpoint and from the way it was shot. Because it was based off a play, the movie feels like a play in action with large monologues, dramatic scenes, and a very slow use of the camera towards the actors that makes you seem like you are actually sitting there live watching what unfolds.

The plot sounds like its very simplistic, but it's very interesting all the same as it's more of a character movie. You see what happens to these characters when such a terrible event happens to their lives-being that in the forties there wasn't a cure for syphilis. Right from the get go you have a lot of conflicts between all of the characters. The doctor, played by a very young, clean-cut Toshiro Mifune, must fight the feelings of anger over his accident, all the while keeping the shame (and the disease) away from his fiancé, and keeping his self-medication a secret from the hospital as he doesn't want them to think that he was fooling around with women and contracted the disease. But the best part of the picture is when the man who gave him the disease comes back and is a real shark of a man who has infected his wife and unborn child-even after Toshiro Mifune's character had tried to warn him-and this big conflict brought about a fit ending for the movie.

Even then, this movie, as you might tell, is very depressing and there is no happy ending. The cinematography almost flaunts that throughout the picture as well. Kurosawa used a lot of atmospheric elements in his work such as rain, fog, and snow to bring about emotions and a sense of change within the story or a character. In The Quiet Duel, there's a great shot in one of the opening scenes where the doctor is operating on the patient and the camera is fervently fixated on him and you can see the room is disgusting, it's humid and hot in there, the doctor is sweating a ton and stressed out, the room is almost closing in on him, and his mistake is made where he accidently cuts himself with a scalpel used on the syphilis patient. This was a great scene because it was claustrophobic and almost made you feel hot yourself.

Later in the movie, rain is used along with lighting as the doctor character is looking out the window-almost looking out into his soul to tell him what to do. This shot was trademark Kurosawa as the screens from the window had a backlight that cast it on Mifune's face and made you see the rain from outside as well as the turmoil of his character on the inside. In all of Kurosawa's films he has at least one amazing camera set up such as in Red Beard where, at the end of the movie, the main characters are looking down a well when the camera follows their gaze downward and sees their reflection (with no camera to be seen), which sticks with me tremendously, but this shot and the composition with the rain and the lighting elements are the definite standout feature of the film. Kurosawa uses a lot of symmetrical lines (which, from what I remember, is unlike traditional Japanese art form) and ways of shooting his characters from interesting angles.

It really comes down to the fact that this film shows where Kurosawa will eventually go with his camera composition, story elements, and dramatic narrative later in life. From everyone I've talked to about this movie, not many people have liked it and I don't understand why. Granted, a lot of the movie is just people talking, but what they are talking about is important and acted out extremely well. The movie wouldn't have been as powerful were it not for Toshiro Mifune-as this was his second picture with Kurosawa that turned into the best pairing of artists until Robert de Niro and Martin Scorsese. The story elements and how the message of how one man in pain and inner anguish doesn't scream, but keep quiet during his struggle with his illness no matter how hard it is for him is a very heartfelt and personal story that Kurosawa filmed flawlessly.

5 out of 5 stars