Members' Screening: Drunken Angel on 35mm

The Lower Depths: The Cinema of Shohei Imamura

Member Events

Join us for this special screening of Akira Kurosawa's Drunken Angel, exclusively for ICA Members and their guests.

The film that inspired Shōhei Imamura to become a filmmaker, Akira Kurosawa’s tale of the unlikely bond between a sickly Yakuza and an alcoholic doctor is a blackly humorous tragedy steeped in the swamped ruins of postwar Japan.

Imamura dedicates an entire chapter of his autobiography to the chance encounter with Kurosawa’s film, and in particular Toshiro Mifune’s bestial performance, that ultimately changed the direction of his life.

“To begin with, I had no passion for film itself; my interest lay in theatre...But the moment Toshiro Mifune appeared, I was riveted to the screen. His accent was so thick that I could barely understand what he was saying, and his acting was hardly polished; yet, I was struck by the sheer intensity of his presence—that raw, ferocious power radiating from the man himself.”

Drunken Angel on 35mm dir. Akira Kurosawa, Japan 1948, Japanese with English subtitles, 98 min.