Tag Archives: Kurosawa Mifune Toshiro

Drunken Angel (酔いどれの天使)

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  • 酔いどれの天使 (Drunken Angel)

11/22/20 (Sun)

One of Kurosawa’s first postwar flicks and his first film with Mifune Toshiro. It amounts to a rather heavy-handed look at yakuza culture as well as the race for riches that threatens to undermine the societal ties that bind. It featured exaggerated performances by both leads, who do lots of declaiming in place of normal speech. There is nothing natural in Shimura Takashi’s gruff language or treatment of others, while Mifune is charismatic but over-the-top in trying to be the tough gangster, putting on a show even in intimate moments. It’s hard to believe in either of these guys.

The story itself is interesting. Continue reading →

High and Low (天国と地獄)

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  • 天国と地獄  (High and Low)

11/14/20 (Sat), Tokyo

This 1963 Kurosawa work is really two films. In the first half, a well off industrialist (Mifune Toshiro) is battling for control of a major shoe company with other board members who want to cut corners on product quality for greater profit. The industrialist refuses to give in and throws his entire fortune into a secret deal that will give him a majority stake.

Just when that deal is set to go through, he receives a call that his son has been kidnapped. Frantically, he agrees to pay the enormous ransom with the money he had gathered despite knowing that this will ruin him financially. Then unexpectedly the son wanders in. It turns out that the kidnapper has mistakenly taken the chauffeur’s son instead. The industrialist is now faced with a moral dilemma: does he save the boy at devastating cost to himself, or save his own family from a bleak future? Continue reading →

Stray Dog (野良犬)

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  • 野良犬 (Stray Dog)

11/13/20 (Fri), Tokyo

Two veterans of the recently ended war, we learn, had their backpacks stolen when they were younger. One channeled his anger into a desire to help the world and has become a policeman. The other let his anger destroy him and has become a criminal. That thin line between “stray dog” and “mad dog” is the film’s theme in a nutshell.

Kurosawa’s Stray Dog (1949) is nominally a detective story, a stylish film noir, but it digs much deeper. Continue reading →