For a little while, Matsunaga doesn’t quite seem to be lonely. He has the same woman hanging off of and around him, two mooks who follow him about, and the people bow as he passes, freely taking flowers and drinks with no need to pay. He spends his days in the dance hall, for hours on end day in, day out. 

When he becomes sick, all these things peel away. The doctor tells him it’s not just his lungs but his environment: it’s as sick as the lake-sized garbage swamp the town is built around, each resident side-stepping this thing that characterizes their existence. Matsunaga is addicted to this sort of living as he is to his vices, each skipping hand in hand to kill him as he tags along hoping somehow they’ll give him life 

He confuses quid pro quo niceties for honour and loyalty, rooting his sense of self in his status as a yakuza, following a code that exists to no one else. Dr. Sanada, the film’s eponymous drunken angel, recognizes the truth from the start and harshly reads it out to Matsunaga every chance he gets, just like he does everyone else. 

The doctor is not a particularly nice man. He’s a drunk, he’s mean, he throws things at his patients and doesn’t have a sense of shame. But he cares. He sees a kindred spirit in Matsunaga, having grown out of that stage and built a different sort of life for himself. It’s what he wants for Matsunaga, as their companionship evolves into something more personal. But Matsunaga still can’t let go.

The trajectory and tragedy speed up with the entrance of a new character. Even the soundtrack takes notice and the simple guitar chords that backdrop the earlier half of the film are banished. Mifune is a very physical actor, and his character cows and curves under the weight of both his illness and the realities he refuses to look at.

His ego fuels him all the way through, setting off a fire that in the end shows he’s had no control at all.