Synopsis
The Quiet Duel (静かなる決闘, 1949) is an early Akira Kurosawa drama you can watch online on iFILM. During surgery at a wartime field hospital, army doctor Kyoji is infected by the very patient on his table.
Home again at his father's clinic, Kyoji treats himself in silence and calls off his engagement rather than put his fiancée at risk — without ever telling her why. Toshiro Mifune plays a man who chooses quiet sacrifice while the careless patient who infected him goes on living without a second thought. Takashi Shimura, as the father, reads his son without needing a word.
Kurosawa made this between Drunken Angel and Rashomon, and it's his hushed, near-chamber piece on conscience and dignity. The illness is really just a way to ask how a person stays decent when life refuses to be fair. It's for viewers drawn to postwar Japanese cinema and the first films of the Kurosawa–Mifune partnership. Stream The Quiet Duel (1949) online on iFILM.
Starring
Comments 0