Capital Celluloid 2023 — Day 10: Tue Jan 10

Scandal (Kurosawa, 1950): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 5.45pm


This 35mm presentation, also screening on January 24th, is part of the Akira Kurosawa season. You can find the full details here.

BFI review:
The first of two films Kurosawa made for the Shochiku studio (alongside the Dostoevsky adaptation The Idiot in 1951), this punchy social drama takes a righteous swipe at the gutter press, as Toshiro Mifune’s up-and-coming painter is snapped by the paparazzi while sitting on a hotel balcony with a famous singer (played by Yoshiko Yamaguchi), the photo inspiring a fabricated story in a popular gossip magazine. Needless to say, the outraged artist refuses to take things lying down and vows to take the magazine’s editor to court. A lesser-known work from the master, Scandal is nonetheless worth checking out not only as an example of Kurosawa’s technical virtuosity and strong compositional approach, but for its critique of some of the less palatable aspects of westernisation.
Jasper Sharp

Here (and above) is an extract.

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