Saturday through Tuesday
While a rubble-strewn Tokyo swelters through a torrid heat wave, awkward young white-suited detective Toshiro Mifune finds to his shame that his pistol has been stolen—and then that it’s been used in a murder. Thus begins his obsessive, guilt-ridden search, highlighted by a nearly ten-minute dialogue-free sequence shot by hidden camera in the toughest black market section of the city. No bleeding hearts here: when seasoned mentor Takashi Shimura points out that the killer, a returned vet, went bad when all his possessions were stolen, Mifune heatedly replies that the same thing happened to him—and then he became a cop. No surprise then that, as the chase progresses toward a final confrontation— electrifyingly backgrounded by a young girl’s stop-start practicing of a Mozart piece—Mifune and the unseen killer begin to seem more and more alike.
Saturday and Sunday (March 6-7) at 3:25 and 7:30; Monday and Tuesday (Mar 8-9) at 7:30.
Toshiro Mifune’s “Jungle Boogie”-dancing gangster gets the bad news from an alcoholic doctor—he’s got TB; and then the prewar boss returns.
“Takashi Shimura played the doctor beautifully, but I found that I could not control Mifune. When I saw this, I let him play the part freely… I did not want to smother that vitality.” Kurosawa.
First collaboration of “the greatest actor-director team in film history" (David Shipman) and Kurosawa’s first Kinema Jumpo (Japanese Oscar) winner.
Saturday through Tuesday (March 6-9) at 5:40 and 9:45.
Wednesday through Friday
Shoe company exec Toshiro Mifune is in the midst of a mortgage-everything takeover battle when the phone rings with a ransom demand for his son .
Adapted from Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novel King’s Ransom, this is the ultimate kidnap movie, with Kurosawa at the peak of his filmmaking powers: with the cops led by SteveMcQueen-cool Tatsuya Nakadai; the de rigeur money transfer aboard the Shinkansen (bullet train); and a jailhouse interview punctuated by the heaviest steel door closing in film history.
“Undoubtedly the most complex detective film of all … Contains so many nuances of narrative, photographic technique, and acting, that it demands seeing far more than once.” William K. Everson.
Wednesday through Friday (March 10-12) at 7:30.
“I’m not afraid of death—I just do not want to be killed!” An aging factory owner Toshiro Mifune (then 35), obsessed with fear of the Bomb, demands his extended family move to the supposed safety of Brazil.
Every device at Kurosawa’s command is enlisted to enforce the mood of oppression, of unease; with a desperate Mifune’s climactic speech equaling his legendary Seven Samurai monologue. The final effect is overwhelming, and perhaps Kurosawa’s most sweeping statement on the human condition.
Wednesday through Friday at 5:35 and 10:05.