RFI: Kurosawa vs. Mifune

Kurosawa's Something Like An Autobiography is a bit stiff and only covers the years up to Rashomon, but it's still pretty interesting if you can find it

Hmm, well, seems to be the only Kurosawa thread on ILE...

Anyway, just watched High and Low for the first time in seventeen years -- even stronger than I remember it being. The sheer tension in so many of those scenes in Gondo's living room where most of the characters are desperate to look away or pretend to ignore what is being said at any one time is breathtaking -- a classic instance of ensemble acting where most of the characters never say a word but are never not fully in the moment.

^^ funny, this. Just watched High and Low last night and was struck by the same thing--the symmetry of the shots with the cops clustered and Mifune alone and his wife & the chauffer looking like counterweights, everyone looking at a different part of the floor. Amazing

To my surprise I was actually much less interested in the second half.

Young Mifune was smokin' hot in a suit (Stray Dog) OR bare-assed.

In case you never load ILF, today is AK's centennial.

or if you never load google, as it was their little logo thing.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01601/google_1601614c.jpg

I googled plenty today, never saw that. Obviously Americans don't merit the culturally literate versions.

Just watched Kagemusha for the first time, only color Kurosawa I have seen. Enjoyed it, interesting psychodramatic themes. Would be better as a war flick if it ever actually showed battle and not just cavalry charging followed by spectator reactions, but maybe that was a conscious choice as opposed to a budgetary constraint, idk.

I mean there is some actual battle, but it seems like it was often avoided in favor of just charges/spectators.

Haven't seen that one. Haven't you seen Ran? That's a good one.

seen Ran, Throne of Blood, Hidden Fortress, Rashomon. Which leaves a lot of films to see.

Cue up Yojimbo asap

(isn't Ran also in colour? yes, it is)

oh crap you're right. it's been a while since I saw that.

i've just finished the last of the BFI kurosawa boxes, which were 20 films in total (but not Ran, Kagemusha, Rashomon...) and my favourites were 7 Samurai (obviously), High and Low, Ikiru (and i'd go with Sanjuro over Yojimbo).

Sanjuro is a classic and imo it is unfairly judged because it was made under studio pressure and Kurosawa might not have been proud of it. Mind it still does have 100% on a critic aggregation site!

on the late Shinobu Hashimoto

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5812-screenwriter-shinobu-hashimoto-dies-at-100

there was an interesting + charming Hashimoto obit on R4 tonight. He was from rural poverty and his first script was Rashomon! It sounds like he had much conflict with Kurosawa's ruthless methods and said he never wanted to see another Spielberg movie after Jaws, because of the perfection he had achieved there!

Some of the beautiful shot blocking in High and Low explored at the late, lamented The Dissolve: https://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/424-the-highs-and-lows-of-high-and-low/

TCM showing Kurosawa/Mifune all day today on Toshiro's centenary
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/1565927%7C0/Toshiro-Mifune-100th-Birthday-Tribute-4-1.html

happy 100th to the one and only

April 1st would have been Toshiro Mifune's 100th birthday. Here he is at 27 in his debut feature film, Snow Trail. pic.twitter.com/zfuJdyjDe8

— Minovsky (@MinovskyArticle) April 1, 2020

hottest motherfucker to walk the earth

More hott Mifune:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ed/65/8c/ed658cea9e0d0b7782d65a1642d444d3.jpg
https://236izu11yygk2uo6po3yerii7d6-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/mifune-e1480702032467-350x350.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fa/55/3d/fa553df03045bee7d486204ef5b4de84.jpg

yes thx

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6879-who-s-that-man-mifune-at-100

My education on Toshiro Mifune began, naturally, with his ass. As a teen, I’d prematurely decided that one could be a Kurosawa girl or an Ozu girl—Kurosawa’s films were all about the butt and legs, Ozu’s the neck and eyes—but you couldn’t be both at once. I dismissed Kurosawa’s movies as too sweaty, a parade of testosterone with far too many swords. I preferred, I said, to be slayed by delicacy, urban irony, women: Hideko Takamine’s flushed glances, Setsuko Hara’s hands hiding her face. I lasted until college. One winter break, during a bout of flu, I let Toshiro Mifune wander into my life—he turned his back to me and said, “abayo”—and I felt myself changed. Most people, I realize, do not fever-dream about the curvature and twitch of Mifune’s ass—lashed by sheets of rain—after binging Kurosawa’s greatest hits. But I know that I am not the first to feel called upon to write about it (Pauline Kael, also a fan: “No actor can do more with his knees and his behind than Mifune”), or to have stared at it, head tilted, thinking: is that . . . butt-acting? Tarkovsky, too, would take a shot at a theory of Mifune’s lower half in Seven Samurai—why it affects him so—though he’s more indirect about it: “the samurai,” he wrote, wears a “garment that leaves most of the leg bare, and their legs are plastered with mud. And when one samurai falls down dead we see the rain washing away the mud and becoming white, as white as marble . . .” I wanted more clarity. I turned to my mother, who lives in Tokyo and has long scoffed at my pretensions. “Wait until you see it in white linen,” she said.

I ain’t gay but Mifune is my crush

I'm glad to see High and Low mentioned frequently in this thread, it's my favourite Kurosawa. I prefer Mifune when he's displaying icy control in films like this or The Bad Sleep Well, rather than rolling about on the ground and howling. His ass isn't a major factor in my evaluation.

A late response but yes to High and Low -- which makes this news a bit chin-scratchy.

https://variety.com/2024/film/news/denzel-washington-spike-lee-high-and-low-kurosawa-remake-1235902630/

I was relieved Nichols and/or Scorsese never went through with a remake, but this one could make some logical sense for the racial issues alone (and essential and unavoidable if they were to transplant the story to the U.S.)