Akira Kurosawa

Red Beard

Red Beard

A testament to the goodness of humankind, Akira Kurosawa's Red Beard (Akahige) chronicles the tumultuous relationship between an arrogant young doctor and a compassionate clinic director. Toshiro Mifune, in his last role for Kurosawa, gives a powerhouse performance as the dignified yet empathic director who guides his pupil to maturity, teaching the embittered intern to appreciate the lives of his destitute patients. Perfectly capturing the look and feel of 19th-century Japan, Kurosawa weaves a fascinating tapestry of time, place, and emotion.

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Film Info

  • Japan
  • 1965
  • 185 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 2.35:1
  • Japanese
  • Spine #159

Special Features

  • Audio commentary by Kurosawa film scholar Stephen Prince
  • Notes by Japanese film historian Donald Richie
  • Theatrical trailer

    New cover by Eric Skillman

Purchase Options

Collector's Sets

Collector's Set

AK 100: 25 Films by Akira Kurosawa

AK 100: 25 Films by Kurosawa

DVD Box Set

25 Discs

$319.00

Out Of Print

Special Features

  • Audio commentary by Kurosawa film scholar Stephen Prince
  • Notes by Japanese film historian Donald Richie
  • Theatrical trailer

    New cover by Eric Skillman
Red Beard
Cast
Toshiro Mifune
Kyojio Niide (Akahige)
Yuzo Kayama
Noboru Yasumoto
Yoshio Tsuchiya
Handayu Mori
Tatsuyoshi Ehara
Genzo Tsugawa
Reiko Dan
Osugi
Miyuki Kuwano
Onaka
Kyoko Kagawa
The mantis
Kamatari Fujiwara
Rokusuke
Akemi Negishi
Okuni
Tsutomu Yamazaki
Sahachi
Eijiro Tono
Goheiji
Takashi Shimura
Tokubei Izumiya
Chishu Ryu
Noboru’s father
Kinuyo Tanaka
Noboru’s mother
Credits
Director
Akira Kurosawa
Producer
Ryuzo Kikushima
Producer
Tomoyuki Tanaka
Scenario
Ryuzo Kikushima
Scenario
Hideo Oguni
Scenario
Masato Ide
Scenario
Akira Kurosawa
After the novel by
Shugoro Yamamoto
Cinematography
Asakazu Nakai
Cinematography
Takao Saito
Art direction
Yoshiro Muraki
Lighting
Hiromitsu Mori
Sound
Shin Watarai
Music
Masaru Sato

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Toshiro Mifune

Actor

Toshiro Mifune
Toshiro Mifune

Akira Kurosawa once said, “The ordinary Japanese actor might need ten feet of film to get across an impression. 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. 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. Just one year later, Kurosawa gave him the lead in Drunken Angel as a consumptive gangster. 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. 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. But it is Kurosawa’s greatest films that are most unimaginable without Mifune’s bravado streaking across them like lightning. The pair parted ways professionally in 1965.

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