The Foolish Man Builds His House Upon the Sand: The Quiet Duel

I was introduced to films older that I am from a very young age, and it is my experience that people who talk about how films used to be so clean and innocent and never deal with taboo subjects haven't actually watched too many classics. Usually, when people try to pull that stunt, I refer them to Rita Hayworth's eponymous Gilda, a black-and-white film about a sexual predator that is anything but subtle or gentle, and even includes strong suggestions that the reason Gilda and her husband have remained married in spite of her is because he's homosexual. A stunning, excellent film - and absolutely not family-friendly. I remember the wierd reviews of George Clooney's tribute to classic noir, The Good German, in which reviewers complained that the oldies didn't have such foul language or sexual elements. Yeah. Watch any good classic noir and you'll note that, in most cases, the only significant differences in content as compared to contemporary film is that the old-time characters say "damn you" instead of "fuck you", and things like gunshot wounds are depicted more realistically - but there's this wierd idea that not being graphic somehow makes something clean, or innocent, or naive, or repressed.

Which brings us to Japan, 1949. Four years after the nuking of Hiroshima and the armistice signed three months after that, in an era so many contemporary viewers think of as naive, out of a country broken in more ways than one and under foreign occupation comes Akira Kurosawa's The Quiet Duel. Opening in 1944, we watch as army surgeon Kyoji Fujisaka (Toshiro Mifune!) cuts himself during an operation on a badly wounded man. He knows that if he pauses long enough to properly clean and dress the cut, his patient may not make it, and so he just daubs on some iodine and finishes the surgery, which lasts another hour. His subsequent blood test confirms that he's contracted syphillis from that operation, but being shuttled from location to location in order to treat patients, he doesn't have regular access to his medication, and his condition is aggravated. Upon returning home, he immediately breaks up with his fiancee, Misao, because he knows that it will be anywhere between five and ten years (at least) for his syphillis to run its course, even with regular treatment, and he also knows that she would wait for him...so he refuses to tell her why he won't marry her. She would be too old to start a family by the time he's healthy, and he wants her to have a life, so he says nothing, suffering quietly.

Even a quiet duel needs a louder one to help it along, and this comes along in the guise of the man Kyoji contracted syphillis from. Nakada is a careless, selfish, hedonistic man who refuses to believe that he could possibly be infectious, and Kyoji is outraged when he learns that Nakada is not only married, but has a baby on the way, courtesy of his unsuspecting wife. He ignores Kyoji's insistence on treatment, and lives in denial of his condition. You can bet this plot doesn't end well.

What sets this film apart, though, is the exploration of how sacrifical love can in fact be selfish. Kyoji's refusal to tell Misao the reason for their break-up is founded on his desire to not feel guilty about the fact that she would wait for him. In doing this, in not allowing her the choice to sacrifice, he condemns her to a life of second best - she loves Kyoji above all others, and though she eventually marries, it's plain that her husband will never be the one she wants. At the heart of The Quiet Duel is the exploration of the falliability of a conscience founded not on goodness or virtue, but the expectation of reward. This is what keeps Kurosawa's films from seeming dated - he tackles the human condition with thought and honesty, not through the lens of the decade's social mores. Some people find it easy to write The Quiet Duel off as a melodrama about a "saintly" man suffering due to the sins of another. I would suggest that those people, amongst other things, completely ignored the scene of Kyoji's confession, and the revelations therein.

There are other things I can't reasonably fit in this space, like the main secondary plot (oxymoron?) involving a single mother training as a nurse at Kyoji's practice, and how the writers used a fart as an apt metaphor for a heartbreaking conversation finished seconds earlier. That bit of relevant comic relief made me howl with laughter, which caused me to cry as well, because of how the laugh pushed forward the intensely sad emotions provoked by the aforementioned conversation. And, of course, there's Toshiro Mifune. Seeing him clean-shaven and not maniacal was a distinct change from what I'm used to (see: Seven Samurai, The Three Villains of the Hidden Fortress, Rashomon...), but man, did he nail this role. One of the greatest film actor's there's ever been.

I have no idea where to tell you to find this film; we found it at the sheer awesomeness that is the Edmonton Public Library. If you find it, go for it. And no, it's not in colour or English.