Stray Dog

Director: Akira Kurosawa

1949 / 122min / 35mm

A harrowing masterwork of postwar Nipponese noir, Stray Dog has a young Toshiro Mifune as a rookie detective disgraced after having his pistol nabbed on a Tokyo bus, driven into the city’s lower depths in order to seek clues to its recovery, the urgency of his mission increasing as the weapon is implicated in a crime spree, his composure unraveling as he draws closer to a culprit who comes to appear increasingly as a Dostoevskian double. Sustains a stifling summertime atmosphere, while shot through with passages of pure poetry.

Part of In Pursuit of Shadows