But it is Kurosawa’s greatest films that are most unimaginable without Mifune’s bravado streaking across them like lightning. Mifune is known for more than his work with Kurosawa see him in Hiroshi Inagaki’s Oscar-winning Samurai Trilogy and Masaki Kobayashi’s Samurai Rebellion. Mifune proceeded to inhabit a variety of deeply felt roles for Kurosawa, including an artist hounded by paparazzi ( Scandal) a bandit who may or not be a rapist and murderer ( Rashomon) a loose cannon ronin who reluctantly protects a village ( Seven Samurai) an elderly patriarch terrified of a second nuclear attack ( I Live in Fear) and, probably most iconically, the wily, shiftless samurai Yojimbo. Just one year later, Kurosawa gave him the lead in Drunken Angel as a consumptive gangster. Taking the name Sanjuro Kuwabatake, the ronin convinces both silk merchant Tazaemon and sake merchant Tokuemon to hire him as a personal bodyguard, then artfully sets in motion a full-scale gang war between the two ambitious and. Kurosawa first took note of the handsome actor when Mifune was twenty-seven, during an open audition at Toho Studios he was soon cast in Snow Trail (1947), a film Kurosawa wrote for director Senkichi Taniguchi. A nameless ronin, or samurai with no master, enters a small village in feudal Japan where two rival businessmen are struggling for control of the local gambling trade. Toshiro Mifune needed only three feet.” The filmmaker certainly gave Mifune a lot of space, however: over the course of sixteen collaborations, the actor and the director created some of the most dynamic characters ever put on-screen, all marked by an intense physicality and a surprising tenderness. Watch it on HBO Max, The Criterion Channel.
#Watch yojimbo movie#
Akira Kurosawa once said, “The ordinary Japanese actor might need ten feet of film to get across an impression. Yojimbo, an adventure movie starring Toshiro Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, and Eijiro Tono is available to stream now.