1949 - STRAY DOG, very good crime thriller from Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa is a year away from releasing Rashomon which will put him on the map as one of Japan's most important directors.  A year before Rashomon, Stray Dog was released and it's a superior crime thriller.  The film is set in post World War II Japan and has lots of on location filming around Tokyo. The film stars Toshiro Mifune who was becoming one of Kurosawa's most important collaborators and Takashi Shimura who was the leader of The Seven Samurai in Kurosawa's film. In the West he is probably best remembered as Dr. Yamane from the first Godzilla film.

The plot of the film has Mifune as a rookie detective whose gun is stolen.  He spends the film attempting to locate the thief while the gun is being used to commit armed robberies. Shimura is the veteran police detective who helps the young detective solve the crime.  The film is set in Tokyo during a hot summer and  it does an excellent job of creating an oppressive atmosphere of heat and humidity.

 

Kurosawa tells an exciting story within the confines of the urban police procedural. Watching this film there is no question that he was entering an important part of his career.  According to the supplemental features on the Criterion disc Kurosawa was a big fan of detective novels which had a major influence on Stray Dog.  This film is also a good look at post war Tokyo as it recovered from World War II. 

The film was written by Akira Kurosawa and Ryūzō Kikushima who worked on some of Kurosawa's best films.  The running time is 122 minutes.

1961 - YOJIMBO - Kurosawa's samurai comedy/drama classic

Filmed after Kurosawa's The Bad Sleep Well, a dreary drama of corporate intrigue in Japanese business.   Yojimbo was a transitional film for Kurosawa and the Japanese film industry and audience.

Kurosawa mixed comedy with action in a story that had it's influences back to Dashell Hammett's novel Red Harvest, a book with enough double crosses for about three novels.

As usual, Kurosawa used a lot of his stock company of actors and most importantly Toshiro Mifune as the bad ass wandering samurai.

Yojimbo is probably one of Kurosawa's best films and is certainly a one of a kind film that has been ripped off many times.

Screenplay by Kurosawa, Ryūzō Kikushima and Hideo Oguni, it runs 110 minutes.

1950 - RASHOMON, classic Kurosawa film is looking mighty creaky.

Watching Rashomon again after a number of years was a minor ordeal to sit through on this viewing.

Everyone is familiar with how the film made the reputation of Akira Kurosawa and brought Japanese cinema to international notice.  The film is still on a number of "greatest film" lists.  The story structure was very unique at the time as the film looked at what is truth. 

With this viewing I found the film to be pretty rough going.  In particular the over exaggerated acting styles of the cast made it seem like an exercise in very hammy acting.

 I know that Kurosawa liked it a little broad in his films but at times the performances of Toshiro Mifune and Machiko Kyo look like Mickey Rooney's character Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's.  It's just not pretty.

The photography of cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa still holds up pretty well, but a lot of his style has been copied so much by other films and TV commercials that it's inevitable it also looks a little dated.

Unfortunately, that's the way it goes with some film classics.

88 minutes. Written by Akira Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto.