The summary for SCANDAL is misleading. Both it and the first half hour of the film make it look like the main driver of the story will be Toshiro Mifune's proud painter who fights a tabloid magazine when he is falsely portrayed as the lover of a famous singer played by Yoshiko Yamaguchi. Yamaguchi is bashful and reluctant to create a stink, hoping the scandal will blow over, making it harder for Mifune to build a case against the magazine. Then, Takashi Shimura shows up and we get a completely different movie.
SCANDAL is in fact a character study-- a redemption story, really. Shimura is a crooked lawyer with massive guilt over being crooked. He plays both sides of the case, taking money from the tabloid to screw over Mifune and Yamaguchi even though he is officially representing them in court. Complicating things is his consumptive daughter, an angelic figure right out of Dickens who urges her dad to do the right thing. The question becomes less will Mifune and Yamaguchi win their case and more will Shimura be redeemed before it's too late.
Like ONE WONDERFUL SUNDAY before it, SCANDAL feels like Kurosawa doing his best Frank Capra impression. It is quite sentimental in approach and this will no doubt grate on some modern viewers. It's definitely lesser Kurosawa, with only Shimura getting a chance to shine as the pathetic lawyer. It's amazing to think that shortly after this middling film, Kurosawa would give the world one of the all-time cinematic masterworks in RASHOMON.
SCANDAL is in fact a character study-- a redemption story, really. Shimura is a crooked lawyer with massive guilt over being crooked. He plays both sides of the case, taking money from the tabloid to screw over Mifune and Yamaguchi even though he is officially representing them in court. Complicating things is his consumptive daughter, an angelic figure right out of Dickens who urges her dad to do the right thing. The question becomes less will Mifune and Yamaguchi win their case and more will Shimura be redeemed before it's too late.
Like ONE WONDERFUL SUNDAY before it, SCANDAL feels like Kurosawa doing his best Frank Capra impression. It is quite sentimental in approach and this will no doubt grate on some modern viewers. It's definitely lesser Kurosawa, with only Shimura getting a chance to shine as the pathetic lawyer. It's amazing to think that shortly after this middling film, Kurosawa would give the world one of the all-time cinematic masterworks in RASHOMON.