One slight different Toshiro Mifune

I live in Fear

Director Akira Kurosawa

Cast Toshiro Mifune

International distribution Kurosawa collection by BBC

Rate A

Few director has been so near my vision of life as Akira Kurosawa. The younger generation of excellent Japanese director like Oshima saw Kurosawa as a naïf optimism but I think this is partially a misunderstood and partially a true. But I found this optimism like the exempt work of his PHD that were able to find a kind of composition that anticipate both the new Hollywood and the German neu Cinema and may be also some of the various nouvelle vogue like his strength. But this love to mankind is not so blind that the director doesn’t focus on the different problem and contradiction. One can see it really well in one rather early collaboration between Kurosawa and Mifure “I live in Fea”. It is a realistic contemporary work in which we follow a young Mifure that paly with istronical attitude a old guy call Kichi Nakajama that is suite by his family because he wants to tale them all to brazil. The camera work is quite interesting with a mixture of longer takes and more small close up and Askazu Nakari succeed in giving in a film that is most shot in day light a sense of stress and of being waist by the leading character Kichi Nakajama that got a double in the more calm on under the lines council and dentist Harada play by Takashi Shimura. The two old man could be so different because the dentist has an excellent relationship with his family hat is the contrast point with the one of Kichi Nakajama. Kurosiwo was at least in the beginning a bit influence by his countryman Ozu and we have a bit of the seam seating everyday life but this is a perverse and more hysterical vision that is really tubule in the relationship with the son Jiri presented  by Minoru Chiaki that has also been acted in severla work most in Rashomon. The son full grown upp is nbetetd by the fater. Kichi has such a drmatical life with a marrige out of intrst with his wife Toyo presnted by Eiko Miyoshi that succed in giving the immage of a person from an other time that has accepted all the presence of maitress that Kiki has taken. Also teh fact that he own a steelwork factory want to poit out that he is a man that could have made speculation under war world two and the caotic japonese recostruction. For me one of the most intersting scen is when the only person that seam to like Kicke the younge rmaitress Yori play sympattetic by Akemi Negishi let him take thier son and the profetier her father well play by  Kichijirô Ueda, an actor specilize in playing villains; he tries to provoce Kichi that is showing like a King Lear is madnes even in the scene of the steel work taht he put on fire and in the end when he is intenated in a sbsylum. Mifume is becoming more or less a predecesor of Lord Hidetora Ichimonji the best part of Tatsuya Nakadai in Rann ; Kurosawa’s own adataption Willima Shakespare ‘s drama. The editing by Chozo Kobata shows the same thing and laso teh music score by Masaru Satô. A really well done and intersting movie that is still worth to see.

Robert Fogelberg Rota

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