Dogs in Danger: Analyzing the Crime Genre through Stray Dog and Dog Day Afternoon
By Bridget Zhang
Crime films have always been deeply intertwined with social realities and in periods of instability, they serve to both reflect and critique the existing social order. Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog (1949) and Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon (1975) employ two contrasting myths from the crime genre, with the former depicting police detectives trying to capture a criminal while the latter portrays criminals trying to pull off a heist. This difference captures the contrasting societal concerns of the post classical and modernist film eras, as well as the unique cultural contexts of Japan and the United States. While individually reflecting the time and place in which each film was made, a look at the two films in tandem reveals how those differences, especially a shift in perceptions of law enforcement, have reevaluated the crime genre’s ending convention of “the bad guys always get caught” and cast it in a negative light.
Stray Dog was released in the middle of the US Occupation of Japan after World War II, right as the crime genre was steadily gaining popularity due to US post-war censorship and the societal struggles that Japan contended with at the time. Firstly, US censorship of film content meant that the jidaigeki/period film that was hugely popular in the 1930s was now banned because it was seen as propaganda with imperialistic overtones, promoting feudal loyalty and glorifying suicide (Jacoby). The decline of the jidaigeki and samurai-centered films led to an increase in action films with contemporary settings, including yakuza/gangster films which dealt with the same themes of social obligation and moral dilemma that characterized the former. Additionally, this rising genre provided jobs to period actors who were struggling with the loss of traditional jidaigeki productions, providing another incentive for making crime films (Anderson et al.). As a result, samurai sword fights on the silver screen were largely replaced with gangster gunfights. For the film-going audience in Japan, the first few crime films held the power of novelty, since films dealing with such subjects had been censored or banned before the war (Anderson et al.). The tumultuous circumstances of the post-war period also allowed crime films to develop a strong following due to public interest in depictions of contemporary difficulties. In the immediate period after the war, many people fell into poverty as Japan struggled to rebuild, increasing crime rates as they turned to illegal acts just to survive (McCoy). The genre hence both filled the gap left behind by traditional period films and reflected the social realities of post-war Japan.
Since Stray Dog was made in the context of Japan, it takes on the iconography of post-classical Hollywood film noir but puts its own twist on it. The depiction of a hostile city where law enforcement is ineffective can be seen in the setting of post-war Tokyo and the film’s premise of a police detective getting his pistol stolen effortlessly by a pickpocket. What follows is a search and chase that is largely futile until the very end. Midway through when the detective duo finally find the arms dealer they were looking for, they discover that the gun had already been loaned out to Yusa (Isao Kimura), a war veteran, who commits murder and robbery with the weapon. The search for this second culprit is rooted in a genre-abiding feeling of anxiety and despair, as the two detectives seek to capture him before he performs more crimes but face difficulties in finding leads. A mood of desolation is further engendered when Yusa foils their efforts towards the end and shoots senior detective Satō (Takashi Shimura) at a hotel. All these elements are typical of the genre. An interesting breakaway occurs with one prominent sequence early in the film where the younger detective Murakami (Toshiro Mifune) walks undercover through seedy backstreets, trying to locate illegal arms dealers who could possibly provide information on his stolen gun. The music that accompanies this sequence creates dissonance as the upbeat soundtrack contrasts with the sense of suspicion that is constructed visually. Documentary footage of the streets of Tokyo are superimposed onto shots of Murakami walking around, creating visual confusion that matches the character’s experiences as he stares intensely at every person who passes by. Just like how his gun was stolen on an ordinary bus ride, any ordinary person could be the culprit he seeks. In this way, the film establishes a relaxed atmosphere for the audience and asserts that nothing is wrong, when the truth is that everything could be beneath this facade, indirectly channeling the key characteristic of film noir.
Notably however, Kurosawa also breaks away from the pessimism and bleakness of film noir with his positive ending. Although Murakami is gunless when he eventually faces off with the armed Yusa, he succeeds in capturing Yusa, who misses his target twice and uses up all his bullets. Kurosawa avoids the tragic ending of Murakami dying and instead has him complete his quest of capturing the criminal and recovering his stolen pistol. While Kurosawa’s early films were generally known for their optimistic endings, this film also had the purpose of catering to a war-weary audience that was still suffering through the consequences of a broken society. Given that Stray Dog is set in the same period that it was released, a positive ending would provide hope to the people actually living through it. At the same time, an ending, where the criminal is caught and justice prevails, generates faith in the country’s police and their ability to provide safety in the chaos of their post-war society.
Dog Day Afternoon, released in the United States, has very different social concerns from post-war Japan and hence explores the crime genre through a different myth and perspective. The film is based off of a real robbery and hostage situation that occurred in 1972, which is one year after the bloody Attica prison riot. In 1971, inmates revolted to protest against overcrowded conditions and racial discrimination, successfully taking control of a portion of the prison. When negotiations broke down, authorities attempted to retake the prison by force, catalyzing a bloodbath that resulted in 43 fatalities and more that were wounded. The poor handling of this situation resulted in widespread public criticism of law enforcing agencies, so it is not surprising that the film displays the strong anti-establishment sentiment that was present across the United States at the time. Instead of focusing on the police, Lumet makes the bank robbers the protagonists, allowing the audience to sympathize with the criminals and their motivations while regarding the police officers negatively. As negotiations begin between the police and the robbers who have taken bank employees hostage, detective sergeant Eugene Moretti (Charles Durning) convinces one of the robbers, Sonny Wortzik (Al Pacino), to step out of the bank to talk. Sonny becomes increasingly agitated as he realizes that despite being unarmed and showing that he has no intention to hurt anyone, the police have surrounded him and keep pointing their guns in his direction. Sonny then invokes the Attica prison riot and shouts “Attica! Attica! Attica!”, prompting the crowd to cheer for him and boo the police. By creating a parallel between police treatment towards him and the abuse of state power during the riot, Sonny brings public sentiment to his side (Trengrove). The change in the protagonist(s) from police to criminals reflects a general decline in trust towards law enforcement and and by creating sympathy for the criminals, Dog Day Afternoon showcases the thematic of situational ethics, common in the modernist era. Furthermore, although Dog Day Afternoon is a heist film, its early transition into a hostage situation is atypical of the subgenre, which usually dedicates a significant duration of the film’s runtime to the details of planning the heist. By focusing on the aftermath of the failed heist instead and how it traps all the bank employees with the robbers, the film makes use of the hostage motif which plays into the post-Watergate/Munich terrorism fears of the 1970s (Sorrento). Dog Day Afternoon therefore exhibits a strong engagement with the public concerns of its time, weaving them into the progression of its narrative.
Beyond its political commentary, the film additionally echoes the socio-economic realities of the 1970s. From the late 1960s to the 70s, the combination of economic stagnation and inflation led to high unemployment and drastic price rises, making Sonny’s financial motivation for stealing very relatable to the working public. This is displayed in his conversation with the television host, where the tone of Sonny’s answers points out the inanity of questions like “Why do you feel you have to steal for money? Couldn’t you get a job?” The film criticizes the financial dilemma of people earning barely enough with non-union jobs (like working as a bank teller), while being unable to seek higher pay because those jobs require a union card which they do not have. By law, Sonny is a criminal but by using his financial desperation as a justification, the lines of morality are blurred.
Interestingly, there are a multitude of similarities in the “criminal” character of the two films. Both Yusa and Sonny are war veterans who resorted to robbery due to financial need but they were also each incentivized by their desire to pay for their partner’s new dress and sex reassignment surgery respectively. By revealing these characters’ motivations, the two films evoke sympathy for the character of the “criminal”, whose ordinary desire of wishing to provide for a lover would resonate with the audience. However, Yusa has gone past the point of return in terms of morality by murdering multiple people whereas Sonny does not harm any of the bank’s employees and in fact would not have ended up in such a serious hostage situation had his initial bank robbery plan gone successfully. Arguably then, Stray Dog still aligns more with conventional moral designations while Dog Day Afternoon subverts it. Stray Dog does so by employing the trope of the “near-doppelganger” antagonist, pitting Murakami and Yusa against each other. The two characters have similar backgrounds for they were both returning war veterans whose only possessions got stolen on the train ride home (McCoy). At a crossroads where they felt lost, Murakami decided to join the police force while Yusa turned to crime. Hence, Stray Dog seeks to create the binary of “good versus evil” that was typical of the classical era and continued into the post-classical, while Dog Day Afternoon draws from the modernist tendency for moral grayness in its main characters.
The difference between the two periods is then perhaps best highlighted by their treatment of the narrative convention where “the bad guys always get caught”. While this is positive in Stray Dog because the antagonist is the criminal, for Dog Day Afternoon whose protagonist is the criminal, it is inherently negative. Films of the modernist period and the dawn of the New Hollywood era tend to be pessimistic to reflect the pessimism of society at the time, causing the crime genre to adopt the myth of the antihero and his futile quest (Sorrento). This myth is seen in the morally gray character of Sonny and his unrealistic plan to flee without consequences. While the audience does not expect their escape to be successful, the scene where the police fatally shoot Sal and arrest Sonny still comes across as a betrayal of their promises to Sonny and a display of their untrustworthiness. Instead of the criminals killing someone, it is the police who have done so. This demonstrates a basic tenet of modernism, where the film self-consciously engages with social norms in order to subvert it. The “morally good” police have committed the morally wrong act of murder while the “morally wrong” robbers did not hurt anyone, drawing attention to whether such designations of morality really stand. The unnecessary police brutality in murdering Sal is also reminiscent of Sonny’s “Attica!” chant earlier in the film and his assertion that “[the police officer] wants to kill [him] so bad, he can taste it” (00:34:33), again reflecting and contributing to the anti-establishment sentiment already expressed from the crowd’s reaction to Sonny’s chant in the earlier scene.
Despite their differences due to time and place, both films maintain the crime film’s dedication to reflecting society. For the sequence in Stray Dog where Murakami goes undercover in Tokyo’s backstreets, Kurosawa used superimposed shots of Murakami walking and footage of actual post-war Tokyo that he told his chief assistant director, Ishirō Honda, to film (Kurosawa). By actually “documenting reality”, the film is able to inject realism into its fictional world, crafting a semi-realistic picture of the poverty in the streets at the time and capturing the period-specific atmosphere. Props and costumes also show the extent to which society westernized due to the dominating US presence in Japan. The gun that Murakami lost was from the American firearms manufacturer Colt and a notorious female pickpocket is said to have always worn traditional kimonos but now switched to dresses. Such details are key in indicating how US presence altered Japanese society and people’s way of life, infiltrating into their living and work spaces. Similarly, in Dog Day Afternoon, Lumet also employed documentary techniques in his introductory montage of everyday life in 1970s New York City. The film already has an elevated sense of realism due to it being a “true crime” story but it augments that with comedic moments that reflect ordinary concerns (Berliner). For example, when Stevie gets nervous and flees, Sonny tells him not to take the car and he replies, “But how will I get home?” (00:08:05). Such random departures from the expected narrative embody the modernist thematic of “chance and happenstance”, reflecting how random reality really is (Berliner). In such a way, both films seek to craft an accurate image of space and time for their contemporary audiences.
From the post-classical to modernist eras, the crime genre has evolved along with changes in societal concerns. The post-classical era was heavily influenced by countries being in a transitional state after World War II, seen in how Stray Dog incorporates elements of Hollywood film noir into a Japanese context but ends on a hopeful note—the police are still effective and crime and corruption have not taken over society— to engender trust in the authorities and the institutions that are being rebuilt. During the modernist era, society was characterized by many social movements and films began to engage more self consciously with social and moral values. Dog Day Afternoon displays a sense of moral grayness in line with this and also reflects public frustrations with law enforcement and the economy. These contexts influenced the perspective that each film focused on—of the detective or the criminal as the protagonist—and consequentially changed attitudes towards the conventional ending of the criminal getting arrested. As society remains in flux, the crime genre continues to evolve and subvert its own conventional expectations, drawing and commenting on the most pertinent contemporaneous social issues.
Works Cited
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Dog Day Afternoon. Directed by Sidney Lumet, Warner Bros., 1975.
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Stray Dog. Directed by Akira Kurosawa, Toho, 1949.
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