I've been working my way through a bit of a backlog of DVR'ed movies since the weekend. Among them was Stray Dog (in Japanese, Nora Inu), a 1949 movie, directed by Akira Kurosawa and starring the dashing, young Toshiro Mifune. I didn't recognize Mifune at first, until the scene when he goes undercover as a scruffy veteran haunting the more disreputable sections of Tokyo. Well, that and the part where Kurosawa fills the top half of the screen with a close shot of Mifune's eyes, while the street scenes that he's watching are layered over the bottom half. No mistaking that intense gaze. This was a really excellent film, heavily informed by 40s Hollywood noir -- even though most everyone is wearing white linen suits, it's either insanely hot or pouring down rain, and the final chase scene takes place in sunny fields of wildflowers. There's also an extended 8 minute completely wordless voyage thru the poorer and shadier sections of postwar Tokyo. Another scene takes place at a baseball game (Yomiuri Giants were one team but you never really get a good look at their opponent's uniforms). Oh yeah, there's also a small role for (IIRC) a set designer at a burlesque-type theater. My hunch is that he's clearly meant to be understood as gay. And he's got a hairstyle at least 40 years ahead of its time -- he looks like he could've walked right off the streets of 80s Japan.
This just occured to me, but Stray Dog may well have been one of the inspirations for Kathryn Bigelow's movie Blue Steel. Both center on a cop obsessed with tracking down the criminal whose stolen their gun.