A Noble Partnership

Kurosawa and Mifune festival plays at the Castro Theatre

By Justin Lowe
Special to AsianWeek

From Star Wars to classic “spaghetti westerns,” Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s influence is evident throughout international film, as amply illustrated by the series Kurosawa and Mifune, a new 12-title retrospective distributed by Cowboy Pictures.

Kurosawa’s collaboration with actor Toshiro Mifune yielded some of Japanese cinema’s most enduring films, many of which earned prominent international awards, including a 1952 Oscar for Rashomon. Kurosawa and Mifune convincingly charts their 18-year partnership and features entirely new prints, seven with re-worked subtitles.

The series, which opened Oct. 11 at the Castro Theatre with Kurosawa’s Macbeth adaptation, Throne of Blood (1957), continues this week with three samurai epics, including Yojimbo (1961), a Kurosawa tribute to American westerns (based on the Dashiell Hammett novel Red Harvest) that subsequently inspired Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, starring Clint Eastwood in the lead role as The Man With No Name.

Set in 1860 Japan, Mifune plays Sanjuro, a wandering ronin (masterless samurai) who drifts into a deserted-looking town where the residents live behind closed doors in fear of two warring gangs, one led by Ushitora, who operates a gambling den, and another by Seibei, who runs the local whorehouse. Sanjuro alternately offers his services as a bodyguard to both sides, playing them off against each other for the highest price. In the process, he develops an unexpected empathy for the oppressed villagers and formulates a plan to rid the town of the parasitic gangs.

Mifune’s performance evinces the understated humor and incendiary unpredictability that co-writer Kurosawa infused into the script, while the crisp black and white photography and widescreen format elicit just the right amount of nostalgia for a film that has since become a classic.

Scene from Hidden Fortress.

The thieves’ comic, squabbling banter and outright cowardice mark them as clear blueprints for Luke Skywalker’s sidekicks R2-D2 and C-3PO, while the stern but helpless Akizuki character foreshadows Lucas’ less complicated Princess Leia. Filled with suspense, action and offbeat humor, Hidden Fortress is both a robust adventure and a fascinating slice of contemporary film history.

In Sanjuro (1962), the follow-up to Yojimbo, Mifune returns as the titular samurai to assist a dissident group of young warriors to rid their clan of its more corrupt members. Red Beard (1965), Kurosawa and Mifune’s final collaboration, finds the star playing against type as a compassionate 19th century clinic director who inspires an embittered young doctor’s moral redemption.

The series closes with a week-long run of Kurosawa’s crowning achievement The Seven Samurai (1954), featuring Mifune in a supporting role as a destitute farmer masquerading as an equally destitute samurai. In this three-hour-plus epic, Kurosawa meticulously establishes character and setting before leaping into the film’s final hour of action, creating a far more resonant work than the average samurai sword saga.

In Seven Samurai, constant civil war and the disintegrating 16th century social order have cut many samurai adrift from their clans, even as the country is plagued by waves of roving bandits. A poor farming community becomes the target of marauders when the gang observe the village’s ripening grain crop, vowing to return after the harvest is in.

Desperate but ill-equipped to defend themselves, the villagers attempt to hire a group of samurai, but are so poor they can only offer regular meals as payment. The warriors themselves are no better off — the first to accept the farmers’ offer is Kambei, who has just killed a thief in return for a bowl of rice. Headstrong young Katsushiro witnesses the deed and apprentices himself to the reluctant Kambei. Together they assemble a half-dozen brave and competent soldiers, but their efforts are dogged by the would-be seventh warrior, Kikuchiyo (Mifune), a samurai imposter who insists on joining the band.

Arriving at the village, they build defenses and prepare the farmers for warfare. In the conclusive action scenes, with the bandits on horseback charging the samurai and villagers, Kurosawa flawlessly demonstrates his trademark command of action choreography and cinematic composition, whirling both the camera and the actors through a series of dizzyingly dynamic battle sequences.

A masterpiece of world cinema, The Seven Samurai caps a fitting tribute to the achievements of Japan’s foremost motion picture partnership.

The Kurosawa and Mifune festival plays through Oct. 31 at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco and opens Nov. 29 at the Nuart Theatre in Los Angeles. For show times and more information, go to www.thecastrotheatre.com.

Reach Justin Lowe at nextwavve@yahoo.com.