Few things delight me more than checking the Campus Theater schedule and seeing an Akira Kurosawa film playing for free on the big screen, the famed director whose samurai films have inspired generations of filmmakers- from the Westerns of Sergio Leone to any ensemble action film such as Star Wars and The Avengers. Inspired by the films of John Ford and the early Hollywood directors, Kurosawa’s second big hit was STRAY DOG (1949), shown three weeks ago for the Tuesday Film Series, a detective film which is as thought-provoking as it is fun. Toshiro Mifune plays young detective Murakami, the movie’s protagonist, whose gun is stolen on a bus and who spends the rest of the film trying to get it back. Plunged right into the world of early Kurosawa’s humanism, the audience is faced with a continued question of causality as Murakami is eaten by guilt over his role in any crimes committed with his gun, while asking himself what made the criminal, a fellow war veteran, end up so differently from himself.

It’s summer in Japan, and the heat of the sun is unrelenting, haunting each frame with a layer of haze comparable to the finest superimpositions and there are quite a few of those in this picture. Switching from his all white detective suit to appear poorer, Mifune searches the city’s slums for days trying to find any hint that could correct his blunder; and as his eyes are superimposed on the city showing his omnipresent hawk-like gaze, a single image came to mind: Dziga Vertov’s Kino-Eye (1924). Making reference to an iconic documentary filmmaker, Kurosawa reinforces the reality of the downtrodden in post-war Japan that he is trying to depict, and, if the documentary comparison seems like a stretch, it occurs again in the obvious newsreel footage of the later baseball game intercut with the main action. Murakami’s endless walking becomes an abstracted movement in time and space: the number of days passed is unclear, with the weather switching from scorching to downpour and back to scorching, while the outskirts of Tokyo become labyrinthine- not unlike the Soviet cities in the second half of Dziga Vertov’s MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (1929).

Described by film critic Dave Kehr as “a vehicle for Kurosawa’s vaunted humanism and social concern,” I would argue that the balancing act between didactic and distant is subtler than he is given credit for. Murakami’s senior, Detective Sato (Takashi Shimura), provides a counterbalance to Kurosawa’s moralistic instincts with his subdued cynicism. He claims “Once a thief, always a thief” and all policemen laugh, except Murakami, who remains somber and hidden on the side of the frame. We never hear the criminal speak on his motivations, like in HIGH AND LOW (1963) – another of Kurosawa’s masterpieces – so we’re left to guess, alongside the protagonists, what his life after the war must have been like. When Murakami tries to defend him, though, Sato contradicts him, claiming that the world is indeed unfair, but so is taking it out on the world itself. His understanding extends only so much to the criminal, whom he calls a stray dog who only sees in a straight line. But there are many strays in the film, even with this logic: the gun being another, which is lost, loose and dangerous and only shoots ahead of it; and Murakami too, who searches the streets until exhaustion without sleep and who forgets even about the safety of the people around him when he believes the gun is within reach. Yet a stray dog only bites out of fear and hunger and Kurosawa knew that context is what ultimately made the big difference between a criminal and a law-abiding citizen.

The heat, the guns and the sand upon which Mifune steps in the beginning scene of the film pay off in the westernesque ending confrontation between him and the criminal, coming back full circle, but this time in a jungle of flowers and fog. Without giving away the ending, I can say that Kurosawa twists the conventions of the showdown finale in a delightful way full of drama and character. If this review painted the picture of a film you’d be interested in seeing, make sure you check out the schedule of free screenings playing at the Campus Theater at bufilm.blogs.bucknell.edu.