Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article Besides the 16 films he made with Kurosawa, Mifune starred in dozens of other Japanese motion pictures, among them Samurai 1: Musashi Miyamoto (1954) and Joi-uchi (1967; Rebellion). Among the international productions Mifune appeared in are Hell in the Pacific (1969), Tora! Tora! Tora! (1969), Soleil rouge (1971; Red Sun), and Midway (1976). He also performed in the American television production Shogun (1980). The documentary Mifune: The Last Samurai (2015) explored his life and career. by Ian Walker “The protagonist of this game is a fierce young samurai, constantly moving from one bloody and gritty fight to the next,” the game’s official website reads “To cement this image of a striking samurai Capcom has turned to none other than the late iconic Japanese samurai movie legend Toshiro Mifune to star as the face model for this rendition of Miyamoto Musashi.” This should come as no surprise to those who watched the Onimusha anime on Netflix in late 2023, since Miyamoto Musashi appeared there as well. The show’s creators were similarly proud of the digital necromancy they performed to transpose Mifune’s face from the real world to animation in the marketing campaign leading up to its release Onimusha as a video game series is no stranger to using actors, both dead and alive, for its protagonists. Takeshi Kaneshiro played Samonosuke Akechi in Onimusha: Warlords, while subsequent installments used Yūsaku Matsuda (who died of bladder cancer in 1989 at the age of 40) and Jean Reno as face models for its protagonists. Mifune’s appearance in Onimusha: Way of the Samurai was done with the full cooperation of Mifune Productions, the company the actor established in 1962 and which presumably owns his likeness today. The best of Polygon in your inbox, every Friday. the harder it can be to start enjoying their works You may feel that you are basically familiar with them because of cultural osmosis where you see bits and pieces of their output or their influences all around you not knowing where to start your journey of discovery Many people feel this way about Akira Kurosawa widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers in history Kurosawa’s filmography is full of historical drama heart-pounding action and profound introspections about the nature of humanity Where do you begin with a director of such caliber An official poster for the 1941 drama Uma — meaning “horse” Most of Kurosawa’s filmography is easily available in Japan on streaming platforms like U-Next or Prime Video The DVDs of his movies are also often quite cheap This makes it easy to watch all of Kurosawa’s films in chronological order from his debut to his last cinematic offering enjoying not just the movies themselves but also the evolution of his style and fascinating reflections of the times he lived through Many Kurosawa scholars see the young artist’s fingerprints all over Uma even if you don’t count it as a pure Kurosawa joint is still worth watching for its portrayal of life in rural Tohoku There’s a bit of military propaganda at the start and end of the film but it doesn’t take away from the quality of the movie many Kurosawa filmographies mention the 1946 film Those Who Make Tomorrow Kurosawa was one of three directors on the project but personally didn’t consider it part of his legacy it can only be seen at movie festivals and such.  A true Kurosawa completionist will probably still try to hunt that one down watch the 30 movies that Kurosawa wrote but didn’t direct including his last script for the 1999 Japanese and French drama After the Rain featuring Kurosawa’s grandson Takayuki Kato in a supporting role Kurosawa’s success was defined by his partnerships with powerhouse actors it was Tatsuya Nakadai who helped bring his visions to life in Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985) there was the celebrated actor Takashi Shimura who appeared in Sanshiro Sugata at the beginning of Kurosawa’s directorial journey such as the pure propaganda piece The Most Beautiful (1944) and the aforementioned Those Who Make Tomorrow This is admittedly a problem with watching everything Kurosawa directed: you’ll have to get through objectively bad movies that he had to get out of his system or was pressured to make It was the first sequel with a number in it in the world and an altogether unpleasant cinematic experience full of nationalistic propaganda The Ironman Method can unfortunately sour some viewers on Kurosawa. A safe alternative is to simply watch the movies where the director teamed up with Toshiro Mifune. One of the greatest Japanese actors who ever lived, Mifune appeared in 16 Kurosawa movies in which he played a yakuza with tuberculosis alongside an alcoholic doctor portrayed by Shimura.  Many consider Drunken Angel the beginning of Kurosawa’s true career although the 1947 movie One Wonderful Sunday also has a lot to offer only watching Kurosawa-Mifune movies is a recipe for a good time and a great way to see the actor as more than just a man who portrayed warriors The Hidden Fortress (1958) and Yojimbo (1961).  idealistic surgeon who accidentally contracted syphilis during an operation in The Idiot (1951) — a film based on the Fyodor Dostoevsky novel of the same name — he brought to life a troubled man spiraling out of control due to violent and passionate emotions.  Mifune played a mix of a modern-day Hamlet and the Count of Monte Cristo but at least we got a fascinating portrayal of a feudal-period doctor and martial artist out of it.  The British Film Institute’s selection of the 10 best Akira Kurosawa movies is one of the most useful encapsulations of the director’s work that you will ever see but it skips over all of Kurosawa’s acclaimed color movies — every Kurosawa-Mifune film is black-and-white — and some of his earlier works which are essential if you want to understand the director The BFI gets that, and that’s why its selection gives viewers a taste of everything: early, humanist Kurosawa (No Regrets for Our Youth), crazy-badass Mifune (Seven Samurai), dignified Mifune offering social commentary (Scandal), Shimura ripping out the audience’s hearts (Ikiru) or Kurosawa mastering the historic epic and the use of color in cinema (Ran) Jasper Sharp’s selection for the BFI is obviously subjective but the writer makes an ironclad case for all the entries It’s probably best to watch them chronologically which should give you the most informative Kurosawa experience ever it will mean that Kurosawa isn’t your cup of tea might find themselves enthusiastically picking up what the director is laying down and wanting more Leadership support forBAM’s strategic initiatives provided by: Leadership support forBAM Access Programs provided bythe Jerome L Leadership support forBAM programming provided by: Leadership support forBAM Film provided byThe Thompson Family Foundation Major support for programs inthe Lepercq Cinema is provided byThe Lepercq Charitable Foundation Go to the movies just once a month and a BAM membership pays for itself Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217info@BAM.org BAM is a 501(c)(3) | EIN 11-2201344​ © Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave® and Teknopolis® are trademarks of Brooklyn Academy of Music Onimusha: Way of the Sword got Toshiro Mifune Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune—best known for starring in films like Seven Samurai and Yojimbo for director Akira Kurosawa—has been dead for nearly 30 years But apparently that can't stop him from starring in a new videogame in the year 2026 Capcom apparently decided he was still the man for the job finds himself wielding an Oni Gauntlet and battling hordes of demonic Genma," Capcom detailed in a press release on Wednesday And here's the confirmation: "Musashi’s face is modeled after Toshiro Mifune iconic Japanese movie star who portrayed Musashi in classic samurai films." The official site offers a bit more color explaining that Mifune's face was used as the model for Onimusha's Musashi while he's being voiced by actor Kenichiro Thomson "The protagonist of this game is a fierce young samurai constantly moving from one bloody and gritty fight to the next To cement this image of a striking samurai iconic Japanese samurai movie legend Toshiro Mifune to star as the face model for this rendition of Miyamoto Musashi." After his success as an actor Mifune founded a production company that exists to this day which presumably controls the use of his likeness I'd love to know how stingy or eager they are to license out the actor's face Did Capcom really have to give them the hard sell But I'm trying to deduce a lot from about 30 seconds of footage Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem) he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike With a focus on writing and editing features he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker PodcastPremium DirectoryThe Black Belt List 20241 min readThe great Toshiro Mifune star of the Seven Samurai made his Fighting Stars debut in the 1982 cover promoting the series Shogun Learn more about this cover and the entire magazine preserved in digital format: https://www.blackbeltmag.com  Accessibility Statement About  Black Belt Hall of Fame Advertise & Contact Privacy Policy Terms of use Video Game News 13th Feb 2025 / 2:52 pm Posted by Capcom has revealed that the protagonist in its upcoming Onimusha reboot will be played by an actor who died 28 years ago along with a better look at its protagonist Capcom then confirmed on the official PlayStation Blog that Musashi’s appearance is based on that of Toshiro Mifune “The protagonist of this game is a fierce young samurai constantly moving from one bloody and mucky fight to the next,” Onimusha series development producer Akihito Kadowaki wrote “In order to cement this image of a striking samurai iconic Japanese samurai movie star Toshiro Mifune to serve as the face model for this rendition of Miyamoto Musashi.” who is considered one of the greatest actors of all time passed away in December 1997 at the age of 77 after an acting career spanning around 50 years Mifune is best known for his frequent collaborations with legendary director Akira Kurosawa with whom he made 16 films including Rashomon He was also credited for making popular the trope of the nameless an archetype that would go on to become popular in the west in numerous Spaghetti Westerns Onimusha: Way of the Sword is the fifth main game in the series, and the first entirely new main entry since 2006’s PS2 game Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams Already a patron? Click the button below to log in with Patreon. Not a member yet? Visit our Patreon page to become a patron and get access to community discussions and other exclusive benefits. I wonder if it's a prequel or at all connected to the Netflix series. Chances are good, since the Netflix series has the same protagonist in Musashi. Nothing new… your character in the original was also based on a dead actor. As long as they are not stealing performances using A.I, this is all good with me. © 1981 Media Ltd No part of this site or its content may be reproduced without the permission of the copyright holder Website by 44 Bytes Toshiro Mifune posthumously returns to his role as Miyamoto Musashi The lead character is none other than Miyamoto Musashi one of Japanese history's most legendary swordsman and in Onimusha his likeness is provided by a similarly legendary actor who appeared in many of Akira Kurosawa's most notable movies but not before cementing a legacy as one of Japan's - and the world's - greatest actors He even previously portrayed Miyamoto Musashi in a trilogy of films directed by Hiroshi Inagaki This won't be the first time Capcom makes use of a late actor's likeness in the Onimusha series The protagonist of Onimusha 2: Samurai's Destiny That game is appropriately getting a remaster this year The Onimusha series has also made use of living actors including Takeshi Kaneshiro and French actor Jean Reno I guess we'll see what the rest of the Way of the Sword cast looks like ahead of its eventual launch in 2026 across PS5 Here are all the video game release dates you need to keep your eye on in 2025 and beyond He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015 then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming or a long haul in American Truck Simulator ★★★★★/★★★★★Drawing on hardboiled US fiction as American film had fed on his own Seven Samurai the director brings unforgettable intensity to his anxious noir Kurosawa’s shrewd use of American source material comes three years after John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven, based on his own classic Seven Samurai; Kurosawa here gives us two Japanese boys playing at cowboys, with six-shooters and Winchesters, the father of one approving of their winner-takes-all violent gunplay. It’s a cynical story from the big city that might have interested Billy Wilder. But just as he is about to dispatch his duplicitous underling Kawanishi (Tatsuya Mihashi) with a cheque to complete this stunning boardroom coup, Gondo hears that a kidnapper has made a chaotic attempt to kidnap his adored son – but by accident instead took the son of Gondo’s heartbreakingly loyal and submissive chauffeur Aoki (Yutaka Sada). The culprit is demanding a king’s ransom or the boy dies. Can Gondo relinquish his corporate dreams and face ruin to save the son of a servant? Poor Gondo. He was the ultimate capitalist: a risk-taker, a deal-maker, a man who had brilliantly sized up the situation and had the courage to seize his chance, but always with a high and moral aim in view. He wanted to make decent shoes for the people. But it ends in calamity, and it isn’t at all clear if he thinks his compromised moral heroism and sacrifice has been worth it. An amazing, sustained piece of film-making bravura from Kurosawa. Stray Dog and High and Low are on digital platforms and Blu-Ray from 27 January. This article was amended on 22 January 2025. Owing to an editing error, an earlier version referred incorrectly to Preston Sturges as the director of The Magnificent Seven, rather than to John Sturges. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. Your Ads Privacy ChoicesIMDb You are using an outdated browser. 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If you are using assistive technologies like a screen reader or magnifier and are experiencing difficulties accessing this website, please let us know by emailing filmforum@filmforum.org Akira Kurosawa described his 1961 hit Yojimbo as a tale of “rivalry on both sides and both sides are equally bad… we are weakly caught in the middle and it is impossible to choose between the evils” Toshiro Mifune’s nameless rōnin pitches up a run-down village purely by chance tossing a stick in the air at a fork in the road to choose which direction to take Though taking place in mid-19th century Japan, the sets reflect Kurosawa’s love of classic westerns the scruffy buildings facing onto a dusty main street The presence of a dog carrying a severed hand is a bad omen a dispute over gambling rights between a saké distiller and a silk merchant having tipped over into bloody violence and the only resident making any money is the coffin-maker While the sword-fighting scenes are brilliantly choreographed much of Yojimbo’s appeal is in watching how Sanjuro exploits and manipulates the two sides Mifune’s portrayal softens as the film proceeds: he’s seen smiling as he overhears villagers gossiping about him and helps Yōko Tsukasa’s kidnapped Nui flee with her husband and son Sanjuro enlists bar-owner Gonji (Eijirō Tōno) to smuggle him to safety so he can recover bruised face prompting an exasperated Sanjuro to ask him to “do his staring later” That Tatsuya Nakadai’s villainous Unosuke uses a pistol instead of a sword in the final showdown is a sign that times are changing and that Sanjuro’s character is becoming an anachronism his “See ya around” is an irresistible pay-off inspiring Sergio Leone to remake it in 1964 as A Fistful of Dollars the young Clint Eastwood cast as the man-with-no name Kurosawa saw it and wrote to Leone demanding compensation (“It is a very fine film but it is my film”) and was awarded 15% of A Fistful of Dollars’ profits Kurosawa adapting a script he’d written before shooting Yojimbo to make Mifune’s character the hero scenes of light social comedy unfolding beside the fighting Sanjuro’s scruffiness is in sharp contrast with the shaven heads and smart outfits of the nine young samurai he mentors and much of the film takes place in smart bright interiors instead of Yojimbo’s crumbling village one female character describing him as “a drawn sword” who’s too ready to kill Mifune’s weary shrugs and eye rolling are a constant; it’s his intellect as much as his physical strength which is needed to resolve this knotty saga of diplomatic chicanery Sanjuro gets to repeat his "see ya around" in the closing seconds It’s good to have both films in the same package the BFI’s booklet containing excellent essays from Hayley Scanlon and Nigel Andrews – the former’s introduction outlining parallels between a modernising post-war Japan and the period depicted on screen The bonus features are excellent too; I enjoyed Alex Cox’s succinct introductions and Nic Wassell’s Out of the Dust Storm and Into the Koi Pond looks at the role of the natural world in each film   More information about text formats We urgently need financing to survive. 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And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday Simply enter your email address in the box below View previous newsletters Toshiro Mifune and the Art of Failing On-Screen Mifune’s tubercular gangster Matsunaga strikes me as a sort of ecstatically tragic figure and just enough of a sense of duty to others to leave him tormented by his inability to adhere to the various grand plans other characters have built around him haunting film; Matsunaga and Takashi Shimura’s Dr The disillusioned doctor feels that by saving the young gangster he may be able to retrieve some of his own lost youth and idealism The gangster does not seem all that sure he wants to be saved it is easy to deduce that very little is going to go right for Matsunaga Sanada and remarks “I hear you look after my guys.” He seems totally louche He leaves the office with a life-derailing diagnosis slowly traipsing out the door with a sense of bewildered Mifune never strikes me as truly wretched or pathetic over the course of this film I do not intend that as a criticism of the performance; I simply mean that even whilst hacking up blood from his TB-ravaged lungs carrying with him at all times a tormented be attributed in part to Mifune’s quite startling beauty but I like to believe I am not that shallow Mifune excelled at playing characters railing against the plan life seems to have for them and genuinely believe that through sheer tenacity When things go wrong for Mifune—as they often do particularly in his earlier films—they go tremendously wrong It is then up to him to decide whether to roll with the punches or stand his ground and fight back against the terrible plan life seems to have for him Mifune’s great skill is being able to make both courses of action seem noble he is never anything less than magnificent in the face of plans unravelling I’ve been watching a lot of Mifune movies lately because in their chaos and misfortune and tragedy they are—paradoxically—something of a comfort Mifune’s first collaboration with Kurosawa Drunken Angel petrifies and fascinates me in equal measure It provokes a visceral sense of unease in me—unease to the point of nausea—and yet I cannot deny its thin die young” lifestyle has always mystified me I feel both comforted and petrified by its tacit suggestion that perhaps it is impossible to escape one’s own fate is choose to bite the bullet a little earlier Drunken Angel finds honor in that concept; knowing when your time is up and refusing to go out quietly is presented here as something admirable The first time we see Mifune after he’s been diagnosed with TB he’s on the dance floor in a fantastic white suit smoking a cigarette and knocking back alcohol An idiotic response to being told that your grand designs for life may be about to collapse around you I don’t know whether we’re supposed to disapprove—maybe so Matsunaga’s death at the hand of a fellow gangster signifies nothing we are privileged with a viewpoint that makes it difficult to feel that same sense of disappointment by the delirious intensity of my emotional response to the image of Mifune I imagine the decades of fervid intrigue surrounding the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian stem from a similar axis—this idea of pain made rapturous death and misfortune symbolizing something greater transfigured into something ineffably spectacular and Drunken Angel captures the terror and the frenzied sense of abandon that comes with accepting this fact Untimely death is surely the ultimate case of plans going awry What more can we ask of an actor than that I have seen good productions and bad productions of Macbeth but it has never bored me—something about its innately almost pathetically human quality gets under my skin do not spend much time pontificating about why and how things have gone wrong—we’re preoccupied by attempting to solve the problem Macbeth is carried forward by that sense of lurching as the characters hurl themselves in vain in front of the unstoppable tidal wave of misfortune that consumes them I have yet to see a film adaptation of Macbeth capture this dizzying mounting sense of the futility of the protagonist’s schemes better than Throne of Blood Kurosawa’s 1957 retelling of Macbeth set in feudal Japan I first watched Throne of Blood on holiday at the age of about 16 in the front room of the very small cottage we were staying in with my dad wandering in and out from time to time After pottering into the room and watching a bit of the film he remarked something to the effect of “sheesh this guy’s pretty intense!” I found it—and still find it—a fitting and scrutinizing the various contours and nuances of an actor’s established image is one of my favourite aspects of film criticism How can the written word possibly convey his almost lyrical understanding of how to hold his body his ability to begin a line in a furious rage and end it on the verge of tears I feel that I have the measure of actors like James Stewart I do not feel that I could ever get the measure of Mifune it is this unpredictability that makes him so exciting to watch it is possible to labor under the illusion that you just might be able to catch him you finally understand what it is about him that makes him so special His performance in Throne of Blood as General Washizu is grandly theatrical to the point that some have labeled it “overacting.” I can understand the impulse to categorize it as such Mifune’s performance as a man for whom nothing can possibly go right is towering it becomes transcendently universal in its vehemence I have seen a clip of Washizu’s prolonged demise wherein he tries in vain to avoid an onslaught of arrows uploaded to social media with captions like “me trying to dodge my work emails.” Funny but perhaps it says something about the sort of eminently relatable quality underpinning the madness of Mifune’s performance We have all had to endure witnessing our plans unravel Everyone has bad days (and bad weeks and bad months and bad years) maybe our plans have not gone wrong to the “I’ve murdered the king and assassinated my best friend and my wife has committed suicide and it was all for naught” extent but the potent terror of Mifune’s performance is something I can feel in my bones There’s a moment where Washizu storms out into the courtyard of Cobweb Castle Return to your stations!,” and is greeted by deathly silence It makes my stomach drop every time I watch it The idea that you might be overestimating just how much the people around you are willing to do for you terrifies me I can’t bear looking like a fool; the idea of being considered delusional frightens me even though I’m fully aware that he is playing a serial murderer driven mad by ambition Mifune’s Washizu seems reasonably confident in his soldiers’ devotion to his cause—perhaps he is aware that they do not love him but he’s assured enough to bark orders at them and expect them to comply It makes that silence feel even more excruciating I always had more time for Macbeth as a character than I did for Hamlet; tyrannical murderer he may be but something about his grim acceptance of his misdeeds and punishing dedication to simply soldiering on regardless felt more honorable to me than Hamlet’s dithering and yet his pride will not allow him to concede this fact to anyone but himself and it’s these qualities that make his performance as Washizu ring true there is still a vague inkling that perhaps Washizu is going to get himself out of this one the element of surprise remains one of Mifune’s most compelling qualities But if it all comes crashing down around him you can’t say that he went down without a fight Mifune wins and loses in roughly equal measure in 1954’s Seven Samurai in which he plays a swaggering nomad who claims to be a samurai—though Takashi Shimura’s Kambei quickly sees through this particular ruse His name is not Kikuchiyo—that is the name on his counterfeit papers that the other samurai agree to call him as a means of mocking him but in the end it doesn’t matter; he does enough to make the name his British director John Boorman, who worked with Mifune on 1968’s Hell in the Pacific, recalls meeting Kurosawa some years after the film’s release and lamenting how difficult it was to get Mifune to play scenes the way Boorman envisioned them Kurosawa replied: “Impossible to direct Mifune All you can do is point him like a missile.” Mifune certainly does seem to barrel through many of his earlier films with indomitable spirit He gives the impression of constantly moving forwards and many of the problems he encounters in those ‘40s and ‘50s movies appear to be a direct result of this unceasing momentum There is pain undercutting the defiance and impudence of the performance but that pain manifests itself somewhat gloriously—first in a searing indictment of the detached scorn of the samurai class and finally and perhaps most memorably in the very moment of his death and uses his final moments to stagger forward and stab his assailant in the chest This scene will likely feel innately familiar in its construction to a modern audience; it’s a trope in and of itself at this point this should reduce its power; when I finally watched Cape Fear having seen the “Cape Feare” episode of The Simpsons many times far less capable of provoking genuine unease It would be easy to assume that Kikuchiyo’s death might be irreversibly marred by imitation and parody in the same way It’s the sort of moment that casts a character in amber Kurosawa’s first impression of him as akin to “a wounded beast” is startlingly accurate here; Mifune careens towards the enemy compelled forwards by that very unceasing momentum I referenced earlier and in the undignified way he lies sprawled across the ground There has been a tendency to posthumously canonize Mifune as some sort of perpetually regal imposing figure—titles like “the last samurai” are often batted around whilst discussing him Though I agree that Mifune was a magnificent presence on-screen I can’t help but feel that such sweeping assessments of his talent are missing something Mifune rarely played figures of noble birth and many of his performances—particularly earlier in his career—are characterized by an excess of emotion as opposed to the sort of stony impassiveness that words like “regal” conjure in the mind His performance in Seven Samurai is perhaps the distillation of what makes Mifune so compelling and vital Kikuchiyo could have been a sort of sad-sack living a seemingly nomadic lifestyle whilst play-acting at being a samurai but it seems reasonable to suggest that he has lost many a time in his life He accomplishes what he wants only in death when he is finally recognized as an equal in the eyes of the samurai But the fact that he seemingly accomplishes it at all—if not how he envisioned it—is a victory but in some strange way Mifune still seems to win His death in Seven Samurai strikes the viewer as another act of martyrdom I am not unaware of my own gauche-ness; I can’t help but be awestruck by the sort of chic high-strung tragedy of the death scene in the latter film I have friends my age who remain vaguely seduced by the morbid allure of the 27 Club; I suppose Matsunaga’s rather sacrificial murder appeals to that same impulse regarding death and youth spectacular self-immolation is a common thread between the characters Mifune played it’s undercut by a quality we tend to find more distasteful: pride and whilst this contributes in some way to his death it’s tempered by a desire we find easier to forgive You could argue that revenge is a motivating factor in Matsunaga’s fatal decision to confront Reisaburo Yamamoto’s treacherous Okada too Where his death in Drunken Angel is misunderstood twisted into something selfish and senseless his demise in Seven Samurai is recognized as magnificent by both the characters and the viewer but for others (Seiji Miyaguchi’s master swordsman Kyuzo Kikuchiyo’s death does not constitute a failure because it means something to those around him Mifune brings with him that same reckless abandon that characterizes so many of his earlier roles Kikuchiyo secures his ascension to the rank of samurai Perhaps this is why Kikuchiyo is Mifune’s most famous character; he makes us feel that we could snatch some sort of glory even from the jaws of death but his performances tend to be aspirational even if it means slaying bandits or fighting TB or wrestling with criminals because whether facing disaster or coming out on top one of the few texts I have found that casts some light on Mifune the person as opposed to Mifune the actor In some ways it was shocking for me to even consider that the two might not be one and the same and yet Mifune the person did not appear to be “taken in by this self.” The article builds a picture of a man who looked at his career “as though it were not his own,” and upon reading that line I felt some sort of recognition I never thought I would have dared—the man was a giant But this idea of him being unable to synthesize the inward and outward faces of his psyche feels eminently human then maybe my awareness of the sort of gauzy immateriality of my sense of self isn’t a failure Even if Mifune did see this inability to claim that his career truly belonged to him as a defeat even if his plans for what he would do upon achieving superstardom left him feeling unfulfilled even if some of his ventures spiraled out of his control (his efforts to establish his own production studio went badly wrong) he will always exist as an actor who lives so vividly in the mind that to this day he inspires fervent devotion This man whom I have seen fail over and over in various movies does in fact win through his willingness to surrender to or win out against various plans gone awry Particularly in his work prior to the mid-‘60s when he was allowed to progress from novice to master it’s electrifying to watch Mifune respond to his plans crumbling around him To paraphrase Cary Grant—another star who was always aspirational never pathetic—everyone wants to be Toshiro Mifune and maybe even he himself wanted to be Toshiro Mifune and seemed largely unconcerned by the overall quality of the films in which he appeared When asked about his feelings towards acting he gives a vague non-answer about his experience making 1947’s Snow Trail; he had to wake up at 3 a.m and carry various pieces of equipment up the mountain and considers the experience closer to being a laborer than an actor The implicit suggestion is of a decidedly diligent I always seem to gravitate towards performers who seem genuinely unaware of their own ability or who at least have no pretensions towards great artistry to realize that you can be Toshiro Mifune and still feel insecure (During that talk show interview he gently mocks his appearance describing himself as looking “sinister.” The mind boggles.) I suppose what I find rather fascinating about Mifune’s life and career is the idea that you can mean an awful lot to huge swaths of people even whilst your own sense of personhood is failing to cohere even though I’m very much aware that few of us can ever mean so much to so many Towards the end of his appearance on Tetsuko’s Room host Tetsuko Kuroyanagi starts to ask Mifune about how he managed to convince Toho to take a chance on him out of mercy.” It’s hard to imagine anyone ever taking pity on Mifune and it’s unclear how much of that summation can be attributed to modesty Mifune is one of those rare actors who seems to exist he can never fail; even in his weakest performances “He looks very youthful,” observes Kuroyanagi people still have an image of him from Purple Noon,” counters Mifune “So you may feel he looks young for his age.”  that idea of an actor’s most famous performances bleeding into the audience’s perception of their personhood Mifune himself exists in my mind in a state of perpetual stasis a sort of constantly shifting whirlwind of clenched fists There is not a definitive version of him that I hold dear above all others He is equally real to me as a shoe tycoon and a bandit It feels like a somewhat perverse compliment Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site will adversely affect certain features and functions Kurosawa’s 1949 thriller probes post-war morality in a Tokyo whose ruins and US occupation mostly remain just out of shot in a heatwave causing mistakes and madness The theft of callow detective Murakami (Toshiro Mifune)’s police pistol on a crowded trolleybus and his guilty hunt for what becomes a murder weapon provide the narrative and sharp-featured young Mifune’s coiled performance alternating mimed grace with feline fierceness is the arrow carrying it to its bruising conclusion Kurosawa and Mifune are still defined in the West by Rashomon and Seven Samurai, breakthrough Fifties releases exotically set in feudal Japan but Stray Dog was the director’s third straight contemporary feature with Mifune made when US censors anyway suspected such period tales of inspiring Imperial Japan’s ethos It’s the flipside of Mifune’s explosive gangster in Drunken Angel (1948) and a forerunner to Kurosawa’s penultimate film with him the bifurcated moral drama and police procedural High and Low (1963) Influenced by the naturalistic location shooting of Jules Dassin’s The Naked City (1948) and Georges Simenon’s humane crime novels Stray Dog parallels the film noirs darkly blooming in post-war Hollywood but is a more panoramic investigation of a scarred country Kurosawa’s mastery of set-pieces is seen during a 10-minute montage with Murakami prowling cramped alleys and wide suburban avenues the white sun bleeding through a latticed awning and midday shadows gridding backs Though Kurosawa otherwise mostly shot on sets the oppressive reality of high summer in defeated Tokyo is glimpsed in shacks and suggestively absent houses the city feeling both claustrophobic and a dusty wasteland Famio Hayasaka’s musical montage of Japanese then jazz-like Western music reinforces the camera’s progress towards an arcade’s young Americanised regulars The sequence was shot by 2nd Unit director Ishirō Honda five years before his veiled Atom Bomb riposte Godzilla.Another white-knuckle sequence sees Murakami and his worldly paternalistic superior Inspector Satō (Takashi Shimura later the cancer-ridden bureaucrat in Kurosawa’s 1952 Ikiru) hunt a suspect at a packed baseball stadium There’s Hitchcock-worthy tension as the detectives later separate connected only by a phoneline as the pistol’s murderous recipient shoots one and the storm breaks in drowning rain the police are diligent and genteelly soft-spoken embodied by Satō and his modest suburban home where he and the younger Murakami sit on the porch discussing post-war society into the night the war,” they’ve been told of their suspect yet Murakami can’t help but sympathise with his fellow veteran: “During the war I saw so many men turn into an animal at the slightest provocation.” Along with a glimpse of US soldiers in a military vehicle (cinema evidence of the occupation was banned) the bloody crime buried beneath this crime film’s civilised police work they grapple in what seems like jungle close to suburban lawns Stray Dog is a seedily beautiful snapshot of Japan approaching American-sponsored resurrection while still a crime scene He'll always be remembered for his performances in classics such as Rashomon and Seven Samurai On this day in 1947, Senkichi Taniguchi’s film Snow Trail about three robbers escaping into the mountains was released in Japan. It marked the silver screen debut of the man who is widely regarded as the finest actor in Japanese cinematic history: the great Toshiro Mifune. The screenplay for the movie was written by Akira Kurosawa The esteemed filmmaker would go on to direct 16 movies starring Mifune we’re focusing on just one of them: the man sometimes referred to as the “Japanese John Wayne,” who featured in around 170 feature films During his teen years, Mifune often helped out at his father’s photography studio. In 1939, the then 19-year-old was drafted into the Japanese Imperial Army. Initially enthusiastic, he was often beaten and soon became disenchanted. “My father always had that forceful voice, and his superiors didn’t like it,” said Mifune’s son Shiro in the documentary Mifune: The Last Samurai “They thought he was too cocky for a young Mifune was transferred from Manchuria to a base in Yokkaichi using the skills he developed in his father’s studio to develop photos to assist with attacks where he was put in charge of providing kamikaze pilots with their farewell dinners he’d become disillusioned with the futility of the conflict and Japan’s fervent nationalism telling the pilots: “You don’t have to say “But in the case of Mifune I was completely overwhelmed The ordinary Japanese actor might need 10 feet of film to get across an impression Mifune also attracted the attention of Kurosawa’s mentor He cast him as the gang boss in his comedy film These Foolish Times and recommended him to Taniguchi who persuaded Mifune to appear in Snow Trail by promising to buy him a new set of clothes Mifune was then offered a starring role as a mobster in the existential movie Drunken Angel which became Kurosawa’s first critical success He would go on to perform in 15 more films directed by the legendary auteur To prepare for his parts in Rashomon and Seven Samurai Mifune reportedly studied footage of lions in the wild Boasting tremendous power and kinetic energy as an actor he became the ultimate ‘roving warrior’ in the samurai films he appeared in his iconic performance inspired several actors as he showed with his heartfelt yet slightly subdued performance as Kingo Gondo a wealthy executive faced with a moral dilemma in High and Low (1963) Mifune starred as the charitable Doctor Kyojo Niide in Kurosawa’s jidaigeki (period drama) Red Beard It was the last time the two men ever worked together there has been a lot of speculation over the years The prolific actor had established his own production company in 1962 something that Kurosawa allegedly advised against because he felt he wouldn’t be able to cast him as freely Mifune had also been required to keep a beard for two years for Red Beard This meant he couldn’t take on other roles during that period Despite not being “proud” of any movie he made other than with Kurosawa Mifune’s body of work is still extremely impressive even if you take away the great man’s films His portrayal of Musashi Miyamoto in Hiroshi Inagaki’s The Samurai Trilogy (1954-56) was particularly memorable as was his performance as the skilled swordsman Isaburo Sasahara in Masaki Kobayashi’s Samurai Rebellion (1967) Other standout titles in his filmography include Mizoguchi’s Kihachi Okamoto’s The Sword of Doom (1966) and Japan’s Longest Day (1967) foreign directors were also keen to work with him In John Boorman’s Hell in the Pacific (1968) Mifune and Academy Award-winner Lee Marvin were the only two actors in the film Despite not being able to communicate with each other the intensity of their relationship makes for a gripping watch Mifune featured in several other international productions such as the Oscar-nominated Mexican movie Ánimas Trujano (1962) by Ismael Rodriguez and Spielberg’s American war comedy 1941 Mifune would have been even more well-known to Western audiences had he not turned down roles as the Japanese spy chief Tiger Tanaka in the James Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967) and as both Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader in Star Wars (1977) by playing Yoshi Toranaga (a character inspired by Tokugawa Ieyasu) in the NBC ratings hit Based on James Clavell’s novel of the same name the program won the Golden Globe for Best Television Drama Series while Mifune garnered an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series The renowned actor continued to work into his 70s. His last film was Kei Kumai’s Deep River, a spiritual and religious journey into the heart of India based on Shusaku Endo’s novel of the same name the same year his estranged wife Sachiko Yoshimine died Despite a very painful parting of the ways (though they never officially divorced) she returned to look after him in 1993 after his relationship with his mistress his physical and mental state deteriorated rapidly Kurosawa passed away less than nine months later Japan had lost its two most iconic cinematic figures The pair met for the final time at the funeral of Godzilla director Ishiro Honda in 1993 They reportedly gave each other a tearful embrace Mifune received a posthumous star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in the motion picture industry A year earlier, director Steven Okazaki released the documentary, Mifune: The Last Samurai, narrated by Keanu Reeves. It features commentaries from the likes of Martin Scorsese and Spielberg. “A lot of people try to imitate Mifune,” said the latter “Especially when they’re playing strong This year the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce announced the selection of Japanese film legend Mifune Toshirō (1920–1997) to receive a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Almost two decades after his death in 1997, Mifune would be just the fourth Japanese motion picture celebrity to receive that honor—following Hayakawa Sesshū, Iwamatsu Mako, and Godzilla.(*1) A typical shot of the actor on set during a break in the shooting the Venice Film Festival observed the fiftieth anniversary of Kurosawa Akira’s Akahige (Red Beard) with a screening of the newly restored and digitally remastered film Mifune appeared in more than 150 feature films and won numerous honors in Japan and overseas He was an international star by any measure He was betrayed by the subordinates he trusted he was a victim of his own integrity and compassionate character Here I chart the turbulent life and career of the legendary Mifune Toshirō Mifune as a young conscript in the 7th Air Brigade of the Imperial Army Air Service (Manchuria) he was assigned to work on aerial reconnaissance photographs and he spent most of his youth—from age 5 to age 19—in the Japanese-controlled city of Dalian Helping out in his father’s photography studio he became well versed in the photographer’s craft Mifune described the Dalian of his youth as “a clean city with a sort of cosmopolitan atmosphere set in a bright landscape.” He attributed his later popularity among Westerners in part to his cosmopolitan upbringing noting that he “never felt the slightest inferiority complex toward foreigners.” Drafted by the Imperial Japanese Army in 1939 at the age of 19 Mifune spent the next six years in the military and the experience had an important formative influence on his character his duties centered on piecing together photos taken from reconnaissance aircraft to create maps of enemy territory he developed a fastidious and conscientious approach to work Mifune was assigned to a tokkōtai (special attack unit) base in Kyūshū as an instructional officer Part of his job was to give the young “kamikaze” pilots a proper send-off before they departed on their suicide missions he would treat each of the doomed aviators to a sukiyaki dinner and admonish him not to yell “Long live the emperor” at the end “Go ahead and cry out for your mother,” he would say “There’s no shame in it.” Charged with taking commemorative photos of the pilots before their departure Sending these fresh-faced youths off to missions from which they would never return was painful in the extreme Mifune wept as he related such wartime experiences to his sons war was nothing but “senseless slaughter.” In 1946 the 26-year-old Mifune visited the Tōhō motion picture studio seeking work as a cameraman but ended up as an alternate selection in the studio’s talent search Mifune took a screen test at Tōhō’s Kinuta studio in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward which was holding auditions for its “new face” talent search Mifune had originally visited the studio in hopes of landing a job as a cameraman but finding that there were no openings in the filming department he reluctantly agreed to an audition on the condition that the studio notify him as soon as a photography position opened up The selection committee initially voted to reject him saying that “it wouldn’t hurt to have one oddball like that” in the wings Mifune had embarked on the road to movie stardom It was not long before their names were household words among international film buffs Despite the success of their collaboration, working for a notoriously demanding perfectionist like Kurosawa was no picnic for Mifune. After a grueling day on the set, the actor was known to get roaring drunk and vent his frustration with the director by howling imprecations into the night. During the filming of Kumonosu-jō (Throne of Blood) when Mifune came under a barrage of fire from arrows shot at close range the actor was actually afraid for his life working tirelessly each day to meet the director’s high expectations His martial arts training was such a success that he astonished seasoned swordfight choreographers with his agility and style In one scene where he was required to cut down a whole band of attackers his sword work was pronounced too fast to be captured on 36-millimeter film Mifune at Tōhō’s Kinuta studio during the filming of Yōjimbō (1961) The creative collaboration between Kurosawa and Mifune—compared by Kurosawa’s son Hisao to the relationship between the engine and body of a car—lasted more than 15 years spanning the Golden Age of Japanese cinema But the partnership ended with 1965 picture Akahige (Red Beard) There was much talk of a bitter falling out between the two he recalls his father’s lament that working with an actor who exuded such a powerful aura was a constant battle in the end there was no actor Kurosawa loved and admired more had the greatest respect for Kurosawa as a director and would have been happy to team up with him again But the face of Japanese cinema was changing rapidly This was in all likelihood the root cause of their professional rupture Some 15 years after his debut, Mifune began to translate his international celebrity into an international career.  In 1961 he accepted a part in the Mexican film Animas Trujano: El hombre importante (The Important Man; 1961). Five years later, he made his Hollywood debut in John Frankenheimer’s Grand Prix (1966) Mifune with French actor Alain Delon on the set of Red Sun (Soleil Rouge; 1971) an eclectic western featuring an international cast including US actor Charles Bronson and Swiss actress Ursula Andress Even as a bona fide international movie star he was a hardworking and conscientious actor even to the point of cleaning up after others He was also kind and generous toward the crew that worked behind the scenes Such character traits earned him the love and esteem of friends and colleagues alike Around the time Mifune was making his overseas debut the Japanese motion picture industry was facing a crisis The popularity of television was eroding box-office receipts Tōhō decided to close its Kinuta studio in Setagaya and advised Mifune to launch a production company to make his own films Mifune Productions seemed destined for success Mifune on the set of John Frankenheimer’s 1966 Grand Prix (left) and reading about himself in a cover article of Life magazine (right) Behind the scenes of his successful career Mifune’s private life was descending into chaos his heavy drinking and infidelity had taken their toll on his marriage In January 1972 his wife Sachiko moved out of their home and in with her parents She then petitioned for a court-mediated divorce The result was a trial that would drag on for five years Mifune moved in with his mistress Kitagawa Mika declaring that she would remain Mifune Toshirō’s wife until the day she died Mifune suffered a major professional setback when his righthand man at Mifune Productions defected to establish a rival studio taking most of Mifune Productions’ actors with him Mifune Productions went into a sharp decline without a word of reproach to the employees that were deserting him it was said that the formerly good-humored As a former employee of Mifune Productions remembers it “Mifune rewarded the dedicated staff from Tōhō’s lighting and sound departments by making them executives in his company so there was no one there who really knew how to run a business His sense of personal duty carried him to disaster.” Mifune Productions closed down its studio in 1984 By then Mifune was 64 and physically past his prime the celebrated movie star invariably traveled alone unaccompanied by either manager or assistants When people in the business urged him at least to make use of a chauffeur to transport him and his luggage In 1990, while on location in Alaska for the filming of Shadow of the Wolf (1992) Mifune fell ill and began to suffer memory lapses he split up with Kitagawa after 20 years and began living alone Mifune’s eldest son Shirō offered me this explanation for the breakup: “While my father was away filming overseas she disposed of the Mifune family memorial tablet suggesting that Mifune’s longtime mistress had cruelly abandoned him in his old age it was Mifune who had terminated the relationship Mifune with Stephen Spielberg who directed him in 1941 (1979) and stayed in touch with him for years thereafter Shirō and his wife did their best to look after the ailing Mifune following the breakup was known to refer to her only as “the lady.” Still and for a while the two were amicably reunited Toshirō Mifune died at a Tokyo hospital at the age of 77 The cause of death was multiple organ failure: He had two blocked coronary arteries He had poured every last ounce of physical and emotional energy into his life and work until there was nothing left Japanese cinema had lost two of its most important and celebrated figures One of the highlights of last September’s Venice Film Festival was a screening of the documentary Mifune: The Last Samurai by Japanese American director Steven Okazaki winner of an Academy Award for short subjects The film is scheduled to be released in Japanese theaters in 2016 the extraordinary screen presence that first mesmerized audiences in the 1950s has lost none of its potency (*1) ^ Nomination and selection for a star does not guarantee that one will be installed. According to the Hollywood Walk of Fame website the recipient or his representative has five years following the selection to pay the $30,000 installation fee and schedule a ceremony.—Ed Akira Kurosawa’s mastery of different genres is a given and one of High and Low’s strengths is a seamless blending of various styles within a single film this 1963 adaptation of an Ed McBain 87th Precinct crime novel has been long overlooked familial tensions and a thrilling race to catch an enigmatic villain Kurosawa regular Toshiro Mifune plays Kingo Gondo He's at odds with other board members seeking to cut costs by producing cheap short-lived footwear (“shoes must wear out” while Gondo insists that selling a longer lasting durable product will be more profitable in the long run Kurosawa sets the film’s first hour entirely in Gondo’s swish but soulless modern home, perched high on a hill overlooking the slums of Yokohama below (the Japanese title Gondo’s plan to secretly gain control of the company is derailed by a phone call stating that his son Jun has been abducted the kidnapper demanding a huge sum for his release Jun’s sudden appearance indicates that his friend Shinichi Tensions build as the police arrive and eavesdrop on the telephone conversations; Gondo at first refuses to pay: doing so would interfere with his business plans and jeopardise his comfortable lifestyle Gondo’s subsequent change of mind confirms that at heart he’s decent and honourable doing the right thing while taking a huge financial hit Watching and examining his beautiful tapestry of films this reveals itself an easy question to ask and an easy question to answer There may be no single filmmaker who has better captured the agony and ecstasy of the American experiment than Sayles and full of characters that are well-rounded and sharply drawn The Film Stage got the opportunity to speak with Sayles about his 1996 masterpiece Lone Star (now available on 4K and Blu-ray courtesy of the Criterion Collection) Listen to an audio version of the interview below followed by a written version The Film Stage: The reason we’re talking is because Lone Star is now a Criterion release on 4K and Blu-ray Or do you just keep trying to tell new stories you write books in my case and you make movies for them to be seen or read And then they come alive when anybody is looking at them So what you hope is that your movies don’t disappear I’m still seeing movies from the ’30s and ’40s I never saw before How come it hasn’t been available for years and years and years?” I was talking the other night with Ron Perlman and he was working with Guillermo del Toro––who has seen every movie in the world––but he hadn’t seen Nightmare Alley and they ended up watching it on a really crummy… somebody who stayed up late that night and taped it off of a TV Lone Star is probably the movie that got seen the most when it first came out because Castle Rock actually put some money into it––unlike most of our distributors who just stuck it in the system and forgot about it and if they are packaged in an interesting way it might be with a couple of other movies or with Criterion Collection here’s seven movies with the same production designer He worked in Europe and the United States.” It’s a nice way to bring people into a movie Right, on the Criterion Channel there are lots of great collections. Since we are The B-Side Podcast, I want to ask you, because one of our subjects a couple of years ago was Toshiro Mifune and it’s one of our favorite episodes We tried to capture movies from his long career We talked about The Challenge with him and Scott Glenn I came out to Los Angeles and met with John Frankenheimer I was a huge fan of John Frankenheimer’s and he had had a really rough patch I need a comeback picture to show people that I’m still kind of in the game.” And the mandate that I got was: “It’s Thursday There’s a Directors Guild strike coming up on Monday and Frankenheimer can get it made before the Directors Guild strike The other part of it is: “The script we’re giving you And I worked with Toshiro Mifune in Grand Prix and I can get him to do this again Make all the people Japanese instead of Chinese.” You know the cultures and the martial arts are very Chinese martial arts are very circular and the Japanese martial arts are very forward and backwards I had read a lot about that stuff already just because I was interested I can get Toshiro Mifune and can make them all Japanese.” And so I did a very intensive rewrite in three days I was staying at a little strip hotel on the Sunset Strip and I would literally call the desk and say “Will you give me a wake up call in 45 minutes?” I would sleep for 45 minutes and then I’d jump in the swimming pool and come back and write some more They’re going to come pick it up.” And I got home which was going to come before the directors strike John Frankenheimer wants you to come to Tokyo and do a polish on the draft.” I went there And then mostly John was casting local people upstairs and he’d give me notes on the 20 pages I sent off to him I’m a fast writer so that wasn’t the problem Toshiro is a little sensitive about the fact that he can’t say his Rs or Ls So can you take all the Rs and Ls out of his dialogue?” And there’s a scene where Scott Glenn––who is very left-handed and there are no left-handed samurai if you watch samurai movies They let barely any boys be left-handed until they started losing the Little League World Series to left-handed pitchers because they’d never faced one And so I had written a scene where Toshiro came in and just said he can’t say the L or “that’s wrong.” Well so finally in the movie he comes in and he looks at him for a minute and he goes then I had to go home because the Writers Guild strike did start I got to go to Kyoto with Frankenheimer and see that kind of cement pagoda convention building the final fights are in And John Frankenheimer does very good action if you think of Black Sunday or some of those things And Seagal did a very good job of half-samurai It’s always nice when you only work four days and the movie was made and you get a credit It’s interesting because this has come up a bit recently. We spoke with Carl Franklin last year because One False Move was coming out on Criterion He worked a little later than you on a Corman picture Is there one major thing you learned from Roger which was: there are problems you can solve with creativity and hard work and then there’s those things you just have to throw money at And those are the things that you don’t find in a Roger Corman picture Roger would basically okay a script because he paid $10,000 to have it written and he got three drafts out of that He wasn’t going to rewrite a whole lot or hire new writers And then he handed it to a director and said but you’re not getting any more money and you’re not getting any more time.” There might be three action sequences or frontal nudity in one scene this will fit in the spot.” And every once in a while in that case––and it would stay in the theaters for another two or three weeks You have such an amazing career in that you start as a novelist and then you started writing these screenplays––which for those who know you as a filmmaker You do that work to fund the other work in a lot of respects what are the genre movies that I love?”  is there a genre you’ve always been itching to try I’ve been trying to make a Western for about five years and we’re still trying to cast it and get some money based on the cast One of my favorite movies of this year is Godzilla Minus One And I’ve seen a bunch of Godzilla movies and it’s one of the best and it actually helps to know a little about contemporary Japanese politics and culture to appreciate but we’re going to talk about some shit that went down And the reactor that might actually kill us all and the government not really telling us that So I had certainly seen a lot of those genre movies creature features––especially on TV or in movies––so I had an appreciation for them it’s not like there was a shortage of horror movies or people who could direct them So if I’m going to do the work––and in many cases invest my own money in something––I’m going to make something that nobody else is going to make in some ways it’s not going to be what you usually think of a cookie-cutter genre movie We wanted to shout out a few movies that you could call B-Sides I would just encourage everybody to seek it out That was one of the few films of yours that I had not seen and in prepping for this I watched it and was blown away by You’ve said location comes before your writing usually How do you even location-scout a movie like that we got invited to go up to Alaska and do kind of a seminar thing We’re going to take you out and do fun things.” And so we got a real feel for at least the Juneau area So we went to go fishing with people and go on a glacier and see a salmon run and those kinds of things And I was just struck: here’s a place in America where you are reminded––even in the capital city where there is only 40 miles of road––that nature is big and people are small And unlike most movies that are set in Alaska we already knew a bunch of people and things that we had seen just as tourists I had already said there’s going to be a scene there So many people we know in the Juneau area worked on the slime line They cut the heads off fish and they gutted them They have all the stuff on and they hose it down at the end of the night “I’m going to have a scene on the slime line We’re going to cast local people who have been on the slime line so they know how to do it ‘Yuck.’ I’m holding fish guts while I’m acting here.” So there’s that A couple of my movies… I know with Sunshine State I went down thinking I was scouting for one movie based on a short story that I had written I went down to the Redneck Riviera on the west coast of Florida The place that I had grown up seeing and I’d hitchhiked through a bunch of times It had turned from mom-and-pop tourism to corporate tourism And I started thinking about the difference between those because there was this historically Black beach there “The Spanish came here and built me a fort We could just wander in and shoot.” And it was used by the Civil War people So sometimes you’re scouting before you even write it and you find… something like Passion Fish is a good example That house that we shot in for Passion Fish belonged to a musician friend of ours who said My parents own it.” And we woke up and there was this Spanish moss hanging down and there was the bayou that movie about the woman in the wheelchair and the woman who takes care of her this is where it should happen.” And I said “Absolutely.” So there’s a certain amount of serendipity but I also feel like location gives a feel to the movie That’s one reason that we try to shoot in if not the exact place that it happened in we didn’t shoot literally in Matewan But we shot it in a town that looked a lot like it It’s so fascinating because it doesn’t really get talked about enough It’s kind of one of those things you just assume It’s an unsung hero in a lot of your movies because I feel like the appeal of basically all your movies is their naturalistic and a lot of that has to do with the way you write your characters It feels like you just showed up with a camera I think I’ve written five movies set in Chicago and one set in Detroit and none of them were shot in either of those two cities––shot in Toronto or Montreal or somebody’s studio And you lose something; you lose some specificity Another movie we wanted to ask about is Amigo which is now from fourteen years ago and comes from part of your novel A Moment in the Sun I’ve been reading Yellow Earth and I have to ask: there’s a character named Hardacre in Yellow Earth Is that Hardacre related to Chris Cooper in Amigo I was thinking this might be the same lineage.  as I got to know more about the Philippine-American War one thing that struck me was: we won that war this is where we learned how to waterboard which was rare in the United States at that time and the two letterhead kind of people––the most famous people that led it––were Mark Twain Because he thought Americans shouldn’t be imperialists; they shouldn’t be taking over other people’s country This is not what Americans do.” And Mrs who was worried about white boys going over there and burying those brown girls there were a couple of times when they were on the stage together––kind of like Timothy Leary and Howard Hunt What I discovered was that before that I only found two American movies made about the Philippine-American War And it’s basically Gunga Din recycled to another war I think David Niven is in it and Broderick Crawford and Gary Cooper is played by a guy who was in the Moscow art theater [Vladimir Sokoloff] And then there was another one called The Day of the Trumpet [also known as Cavalry Command] with John Agar “There’s two movies?” That was a significant war in its time This is history that isn’t forgotten back when that was something you could do.  that’s interesting.” And then through Mario Ontal––who had been an assistant editor that I’d worked with who’s Filipino––I got to know Joel Torre who is like their Tom Hanks but I realized we could make a movie for half of what we could make in the States And I think we have $1 million in the bank We went out there and did it and got to work with a wonderful At that point they weren’t shooting sync sound for their movies––like they used to not do in Italy and then they could teach some of our people how to do it.” but generally they’re just too much in a hurry to it’s a country with maybe 15 or 16 languages he’s from Negros and Tagalog was his second language popular young actor––“I’m going to do my own looping.” And he would notice that the technicians were turning their backs because they were laughing at his accent So he did like a year or two of really intensive work I acted in one of the first sync-sound Italian movies called La fine della notte a long People were talking while we were shooting and one of them was the producer taking phone calls So we’re coming to the end of our time but I want to just shout-out Go for Sisters really to our earlier point: the location is so crucial and it has that border element that Lone Star has in a different way That was also a good example of me writing a movie where I kind of thought there’s not that many movies about female friendship.” And a lot of young women who That happens when you’re growing apart I could get Eddie Olmos to do this,” you know I think they’re going to be African-American Just knowing that I had those three actors at the center of it or movie you wrote––that you want to tell everybody “seek this out?” I’m trying to think of what doesn’t ever get seen actually the B-Sides are all the movies I wrote for other people that should’ve got made and didn’t Jamie MacGillivray was a screenplay first that I wrote for Robert Carlyle and then And then I have a book coming out next year called To Save the Man which is set in the Carlisle Indian School in 1890 So one of the things that happens if you’re a novelist and you can’t raise money to make movies Lone Star is now available on The Criterion Collection Dan Mecca is the co-founder and managing editor of The Film Stage. He is a producer and filmmaker living in Pittsburgh. He watches a lot of movies and tracks them on Letterboxd The MSP Film Society will bring a slate of classic Akira Kurosawa samurai films to its Main Cinema beginning Aug serves up the Japanese director's most influential samurai films all featuring the swaggering charm of Toshiro Mifune.  The series is headlined by a 70th anniversary 4K restoration of what is likely Kurosawa's most famous film It'll also feature screenings of Rashomon; the "MacBeth" retelling which was the inspiration for the career-launching Clint Eastwood spaghetti western Toshiro Mifune in 'Seven Samurai' While Kurosawa's influential career lasted from the early '40s into the early '90s, the series focuses on a 12-year span where many of his most revered films, both samurai and otherwise, were created. (In addition to films in the series, that's also the period when he directed Ikiru, The Lower Depths, The Hidden Fortress, The Bad Sleep Well, the underappreciated I Live in Fear, and, in 1963, High and Low.) Here's when you can take in a little of the "Summer of Samurai." By Dustin Nelson is BMTN's lead Minnesota food saying he'd killed the mother of his child which features a swimming beach and splash pad in the venerable Farmers and and Mechanics Savings Bank building and live scores dot the calendar this week 'The Babadook,' and a program of Minnesota-made animation or on tap this week with most films screening at The Main Cinema in Minneapolis showcasing important stories and film history The Geek Show At first glance Red Sun seems like a standard western the first thing you notice is the starry international cast: Charles Bronson (American) the recently deceased Alain Delon (French) and Ursula Andress (Swiss) – it truly is an interesting film This is one of the aspects that makes this Spaghetti Western directed by Terence Young (known for directing three James Bond films including Dr No (1962) attempting to rob is that of the Japanese Ambassador who is bringing a ceremonial gold sword to give to the President of the United States The bandits end up taking it but Gauche betrays Link trying to kill him whilst also killing one of the Ambassador’s bodyguards vows revenge and to retrieve the stolen sword This results in Link and Kuroda teaming up I have only seen one other film featuring Charles Bronson so my knowledge of him is severely limited his role in this film was hard for me to like what with his character being the smart ass of the film – akin to Chris Pratt and Ryan Reynolds This made the first thirty minutes of the film unpleasant especially since they focused more on Bronson’s character instead of the more interesting one but it’s something else to watch his samurai character take down Native Americans with his samurai sword and in Mifune and Bronson are given equal screen time redressing that early imbalance as they set out to kill Delon’s Gauche Ursula Andress’ character (Cristina) is introduced about half way through giving us time to warm up to Mifune’s and Bronson’s characters – yet the lack of Andress does hurt the film in the early moments Cristina maintains a cold relationship with Link throughout and it is not usually clear whether she agrees with him/likes him or if she is just trying to manipulate him (usually with her feminine charms) There is a scene where Andress is topless which came as a surprise for me I did not expect nudity from a named actor in a 70s Western The cinematography by Henri Alekan is another standout the locations are brilliantly captured and display the beauty of the desert the final fight in the high grass; even though I haven’t seen a lot of older westerns it seemed like an unique place to have an important scene There were some great close shots in the high grass that give the viewer a more personal view of the action there are some other first person shots that also feel unique within the genre and really enhance the viewing experience and Ursula Andress really make the film feel like a special The cinematography and story are strong points too The 4K steelbook and Blu-Ray releases (Region B) from Studio Canal included a new interview with Steven Okazaki an archive behind the scenes special feature from Pour le cinéma Red Sun is out now on Studio Canal Blu Ray Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email Movie star Toshiro Mifune and director Akira Kuroswa on the set of Seven Samurai as if careful not to let slip a hint of his next move and family members interviewed for this instructive but staid and unsurprising documentary Japanese culture doesn't encourage people to disclose their deepest feelings even if he was born in China and didn't see Japan until he was a 20-year-old draftee in 1940 Director and co-writer Stephen Okazaki begins with a flurry of clips from Mifune's best-known films and then offers a quick history of Japanese cinema emphasizing the chanbara (swordfight) genre The rest of the movie is biographical and puts an understandable emphasis on Mifune's relationship with Akira Kurosawa who directed him in 16 films from 1948's Drunken Angel to 1965's Red Beard The two former allies regarded each other warily for the rest of their lives whose low-key narration barely conveys his affection for Mifune and samurai movies The other American voices belong to Steven Spielberg whose comments are more interesting than Spielberg's although not informed by direct knowledge Why did Mifune and Kurosawa stop working together "Sometimes people use each other up," Scorsese says which is plausible but doesn't add any solid information about the great mystery of Mifune's career That director and actor were once ideal for other is illustrated by the success of Rashomon and Seven Samurai (Did George Lucas offer Mifune the role of Obi Wan Kenobi Maybe.) But the most vivid anecdote involves Throne of Blood The director was maniacal enough to have amateur archers shoot hundreds of real arrows at his star and Mifune was dedicated enough to abide that Scorsese compares Mifune to silent-film daredevils such as Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin whose risky stunts made for mesmerizing movies The Japanese interviewees include Mifune's son and many actors and actresses who worked with the star boasts that Mifune killed him more than 100 times on screen who in the same year played a bandit in Seven Samurai and his best-known role Actress Yoko Tsukasa notes that the movies Kurosawa and Mifune made together were "all about men," a comment that's more resonant for those who know that such leading Japanese directors as Yasujiro Ozu Representing a new generation is contemporary star Koji Yakusho so he can merely offer his impressions of the man he's seen only in movies and the documentary might be better if it included a few more of them Mifune: The Last Samurai is a relatively short film that would have benefited from additional voices as well as more Kurosawa-like sweep and Mifune-style verve Become an NPR sponsor This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page Legendary actor Toshiro Mifune could be less a stoic ronin Mifune: The Last Samurai Toshiro Mifune in “The Seventh Samurai.” Why in the world was Toshiro Mifune, the great star of Japanese cinema, in attendance at the 1985 Montreal World Film Festival? Whatever the reason, I got the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet him there and to interview him. How rare was that? To this day, I have never encountered anyone else who has talked to him. And the rather perfunctory new film biography, Steven Okazaki’s Mifune: The Last Samurai is remarkable for not offering a single filmed Q&A with the late actor (Or a Q&A either with filmmaker Akira Kurosawa Too bad there was no camera in the hotel room where we spoke As I reported in 1985 for Toronto’s Globe and Mail racing around his Montreal hotel room to punctuate his anecdotes breaking into imaginary swordfights and samurai battles and in general tiring out his poor Japanese-to-English translator who simply can’t keep up with him.” That’s right: Mifune was less a stoic ronin many talking heads speak reverently of the actor “I didn’t expect him to laugh as much as he did,” said Spielberg who recalled that Toshiro would chortle at the end of every intense take most notably in The Samurai Trilogy and in the Kurosawa classics a wandering uncouth samurai missing an ascetic master In The Seventh Samurai he is a fake samurai animalistic poseur who gets adopted by the real samurai like a rescue dog We do learn in Mifune of his two great loves The alcohol—whiskey and saki—led to smashed autos and drunken challenges to fight yakuza gangsters showing where the modern samurai genre originated via clips from silent Japanese “chanbara” films these often based on kabuki plays but opening up for the cinema with astonishingly choreographed swordsplay I wish as much care would have been taken with clips from Mifune films but many of Kurosawa’s finest with Mifune are skipped over entirely Surely someone has the inside story of why they stopped making movies together Filmmaker Okazaki doesn’t have an explanation He tries to push a feel-good narrative that Mifune was intensely loyal to Kurosawa even after they separated as he was so grateful that Kurosawa had discovered him and made him a star In my 1985 interview it was obvious that Mifune was more resentful of Kurasawa than he was dazzled by his director when I asked if he and Kurosawa ever quarreled: the prideful Mifune was still smarting from the public humiliation “No matter how much I drank the night before,” Mifune said Those who worked with Toshiro Mifune confirmed that he was always punctual getting to the set I learned something about the famous violent ending to Throne of Blood and Kurosawa hadn’t bothered with insurance Gerald Peary is a retired film studies professor at Suffolk University curator of the Boston University Cinematheque and the general editor of the “Conversations with Filmmakers” series from the University Press of Mississippi writer-director of the documentaries For the Love of Movies: the Story of American Film Criticism and Archie’s Betty and a featured actor in the 2013 independent narrative Computer Chess So Mifune was involved in “smashed autos and drunken challenges to fight yakuza gangsters.” Really you say: “Those were real arrows piercing Mifune and Kurosawa hadn’t bothered with insurance.” I thought Mifune a Japanese analog to Brando The Lady’s Dressing Room (1732) BY JONATHAN SWIFT Five hours (and who can do it less in?) By haughty Celia… but this Littlefield review has convinced me to make the purchase your comments reek of what is wrong in today's society and also if entitlement About Us Advertising/Underwriting Syndication Media Resources Editors and Contributors © 2025 The Arts Fuse. All Rights Reserved. Site by AuthorBytes From our recent blockbuster tribute to Toshirō Mifune 10-film series celebrating the legendary Japanese actor's collaborations with director Akira Kurosawa all presented in 35mm with a new 4K restoration of RASHOMON  "The greatest actor-director partnership in film history” - David Shipman DOWNLOAD SERIES FLYER Tuesday, July 19 at 12:30   7:50 In “Mifune: The Last Samurai” a new documentary by director/producer Steven Okazaki [at the IFC Center through December 1] he cites Steven Spielberg: “Without Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune Clint Eastwood wouldn’t have “A Fistful of Dollars” and Darth Vader wouldn’t be a Samurai… Toshiro played a wild character…from the earth itself as if he’d been created by forces of seismic activities underground We don’t make the heroes—It’s up to the audience to turn a character into a hero and the power is in the performance of the actor even more than the director.” Having seen most of Mifune’s iconic films later meeting him [in New York in 1984] Okazaki at The Japan Society was a special treat M.L.: Did you make this documentary as an homage to director Kurosawa and Mifune SO: I’m Sensei [second generation] born in L.A My parents sent me to Japanese language school —-I hated it They let me quit and just take Judo…We saw “Seven Samurai” on a [fluttering sheet] screen at a Japanese theater in a tough Japanese African-American neighborhood… We were constantly re-enacting the Jets and Sharks scenes from “West Side Story” Japanese and Mexican American kids really took to Mifune I wanted to introduce him to a younger audience…who don’t realize how influential Kurosawa and Mifune were… Eastwood told me ‘[without Mifune] I don’t think I would have had a career.’ Loner Paul Newman in “Cool Hand Luke” and Bruce Willis came out of that mold ML: Are young people in Japan aware of his amazing films OS: Not very much…When we started the film we went to the biggest teen street in Japan and asked them what happened on August 6 To them he was “that guy in ‘Shogun’… Teenagers today… When [Kurosawa’s] “Rashomon”[1950] came out in Japan it was not a hit But when it became a hit outside…in Europe—then all the Japanese wanted to see it ML: “Rashomon”—a story of four people witnessing—a rape-murder each offering a different account of the event It’s come into the language as a metaphor of ‘he saw-she saw’ OS: Taking note of his uniqueness …in “Throne of Blood” [1957 adaptation of “Macbeth”] Kurosawa asked Mifune to ride a horse at full speed Mifune said ‘Whaaat!!’ You see him do it in the film No insurance!…He is a man against the system…breaking the rules— who ended up a hero in Japan ML: Did Mifune’s growing up in China have an effect in his ‘listening to his own drummer I think it was not as extreme as my grandparents moving to America… I am fascinated by Japan but I always say a prayer thanking my grandparents for getting out Toshiro could easily have had a mistress and have no one knowing about it—as did other Japanese But he saw that as hypocrisy and so he had a divorce-opened himself up to the tabloid press and the press went wild He never got a divorce but when he got Alzheimer’s his mistress left him and his wife came back to care for him Were it not for [Folksbiene’s] Zalmen Mloteks father Yosl Mlotek (the Yiddish Forward’s late culture editor) my daughter Karen and I might never have met Toshiro Mifune my mother and I lived in a house in Yamamoto Dori in Kobe -Let’s go—Let’s see Japan—when will we ever be here again” And so—accompanied by the Japanese maid of local Jewish family we went to dinky movie houses in downtown Kobe to see early silent Samurai sword fighting “Chanbara” flicks It was a prelude to my becoming a Japanese film fan After Karen had entered The Center for Public Cinema film poster contest with a woodcut of Mifune in “Seven Samurai” for which she won second prize New York City’s Japan Society hosted a weeklong Toshiro Mifune film retrospective with the star present We were granted a private audience with Mifune at which Karen presented him with a copy of the poster and asked if he would autograph it “He never signs autographs!” his translator whispered Mifune demanded a marker and signed the poster in Japanese and English I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward American Jews need independent news they can trust At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S rising antisemitism and polarized discourse This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up Copyright © 2025 The Forward Association Mifune starred in many of Kurosawa’s best-loved films It was in the late 1940s when the two men were introduced and Kurosawa found the man that would play many of his most-acclaimed lead roles The biggest film production studio in Japan The director didn’t feel like attending the event but was persuaded by the actress Hideko Takamine who said that there was a young actor there with much promise Kurosawa later remembered “a young man reeling around the room in a violent frenzy It was as frightening as watching a wounded beast trying to break loose who once said: “I am a person rarely impressed by actors Several widely-celebrated collaborations between the two Japanese cinema icons followed with Mifune making a name for himself by subverting the typically polite and clean samurai who were undoubtedly skilled but rough around the edge in terms of their conduct Mifune also developed the wandering ronin character archetype where his character didn’t even have a name This was adopted by Sergio Leone and Clint Eastwood when Eastwood played ‘The Man With No Name’ in Leone’s Dollars Trilogy showing Mifune’s undoubted effect on global cinema who had once been in deep admiration of one another There are several reasons why Kurosawa and Mifune fell out of favour with one another One explanation is that Mifune had sought to begin his own production company but Kurosawa had suggested against it because he privately felt that he would not be able to cast him as easily Mifune had also been required to grow a natural beard for Red Beard which he was to keep for two years of filming but this meant that he could not play any other roles during this time a result that he no doubt blamed on Kurosawa The following years saw a drop in interest in Kurosawa’s films and Mifune continued to enjoy success in a number of samurai films not directed by his former frequent partner When Mifune enjoyed success in America with the television miniseries Shogun Kurosawa slandered the programme in public Mifune essentially showed Kurosawa up when he always spoke of him with profound respect in press appearances “I have never as an actor done anything that I am proud of other than with him.” An interview with the Rashomon actor’s daughter claims that George Lucas was keen for him to take a key role in Star Wars Toshiro Mifune turned down the chance to play a key role in Star Wars, according to the late actor’s daughter, Mika Mifune. Read moreThe star of Rashomon and Seven Samurai was approached by George Lucas to appear in his 1977 sci-fi adventure, but the two couldn’t strike a deal, according to the Hollywood Reporter “I heard from my father that he was offered the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi but he was concerned about how the film would look and that it would cheapen the image of samurai on which George Lucas had based a lot of the character and fighting style,” said Mika The plot of Star Wars was loosely based on The Hidden Fortress a 1958 film that Mifune starred in for director and frequent collaborator Akira Kurosawa sci-fi movies still looked quite cheap as the effects were not advanced and he had a lot of samurai pride,” Mika said there was talk about him taking the Darth Vader role as his face would be covered Other actors who turned down roles in the film include Al Pacino The news came from an event to announce Tokyo Comic Con scheduled to take place from 5 to 6 December This article was amended on 4 December 2015 it originally used a photo of the actor Tatsuya Nakadai It was further amended on 6 December 2015 to make clear that the source of this story was the Hollywood Reporter.