Decidedly, the early Kurosawa was the best; and he rightly ranks with Bergman, Fellini, Welles, with the very best.<br /><br />There was a manly and controlled strength and energy and life in the early Kurosawa, that remains unmatched.<br /><br />If you read this '49 thriller, or action drama, as a noir, then it's the most respectable noir ever; as original and ingenious, formally, as Welles', but much more ambitious; yes, the most ambitious noir ever conceived and executed. The richness of content and of style may seem unbelievable. There are touches of imperishable surrealist hallucinating beauty—a feverish and bizarre, disconcerting, tough masterpiece. While obviously influenced by the noir movies en vogue those days, it has nothing, properly speaking, of a pastiche. The plot is rather Chandleresque, requiring a firm hold on the personae and threads.<br /><br />One can see why some were displeased—Kurosawa kept filming noir movies, disguised westerns, Russian dramas, Shakespearian dramas, epics …--even in NORA INU there's a strong Russian undercurrent—but all these shapes and means are never more than tools or instruments. Kurosawa aimed at universality; he often achieved it.<br /><br />NORA INU seems a Russian novel filmed like a noir; or a noir, a pulp made like a Russian novel. Very Russian, indeed, and viscerally impressive; extremely atmospheric, suggestive, rich in urban life touches, with a strong load of eroticism in quite a few scenes, naturalistic and brutal in some respects, harsh as tone and bleak—in many ways, rather unlike Kurosawa's ulterior elegiac and lyrical success IKIRU. I enjoyed very much IKIRU, but I have found NORA INU in some respects even stronger and more respectable; I ignored completely this early Kurosawa, Kurosawa's whole early career, and now I see it's something awesome. In NORA INU, Kurosawa does an American—style movie better than the Americans; a drama with Russian content—better than the Russians. Kurosawa was a mighty stylist, very ambitious and skilled. Humanistic and wise, his work is deliberately 'cosmopolitan' and international, i.e., simply universal. What I knew less about him was this surrealist side, so obvious in NORA INU. It's more than the usual 'hot town' suggestiveness of some American outings, something more than the lecherous 'cat on the hot tin roof'/ 'long hot summer' neurotic poetry. But it has to be seen, to be believed. There are in NORA INU things, intuitions, images, bits that I, Cristian Ciopron, did not find yet in the American cinema; Kurosawa was, we all know it already, deft with the genre flicks, and NORA INU is an exemplar action drama—with what perspicacity and brio and shocking vehemence! Should I add that NORA INU instantly devalues most of the other noir movies as standard slapdash? Perhaps not.<br /><br />Like Fellini, like Bergman, Kurosawa achieved here to give the cinema's poetry its most pure and unadulterated expression. Like or not his samurais—this, NORA INU, is high—voltage surrealism.<br /><br />Structurally, NORA INU is a baroque/ romantic masterpiece, with subtleties of construction and intricacies of layout. The enormous richness, of content, themes, styles, produces a startling impression. It's an honor, dear readers, to write about such capital achievements; and you, please honor Kurosawa's NORA INU by seeing it. It's one of the movies that redefine cinema for somebody.<br /><br />Previous to seeing NORA INU, I thought that I knew something about the noir cinema; I knew nothing.