Kurosawa (2001); Red Beard (1965, Criterion Collection). I'm a huge Akira Kurosawa fan, but I had never seen either the documentary on Kurosawa's life and cinematic work, Kurosawa, or Kurosawa's film Red Beard. When people talk of Kurosawa, they usually talk of such films as Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Ikiru, Ran, Kagemusha -- huge titles in the world history of cinema from this great master filmmaker. I wanted to see Red Beard, which according to the documentary was both the film that strained the Mifune - Kurosawa partnership to the breaking point (they never made a film together again) and the film that nearly bankrupted Toho Studios.
It is a fine, a remarkable film, based on a novel by Shuguro Yamamoto, about a physician (Red Beard, a nickname for the respected doctor played by Toshiro Mifune, the head of an underfunded clinic) whose gruff manner is exceeded only by his healing skills. A young and promising intern is assigned to the clinic against his will. By working with the desperate and difficult cases that come into the clinic from the poorest sector of the population, under the tutelage of the dedicated and formidable Red Beard, the young physician grows and blossoms and the patients of the clinic are well-tended.
The film progresses as we follow the cases of several key patients and learn their stories -- and the attitude and skills of the haughty intern undergo change and transformation as the cases progress.
The film's pace may seem slow to our modern whiz-bang video-trained eyes, but Kurosawa tells a story of slow developments, seasoned by an occasional brief action sequence -- at one point, Red Beard takes on the bouncers who work for a brothel when he needs to remove a young girl to the clinic for treatment, and the doctor surprises everyone but himself when he prevails using martial arts rather than brute force -- always his method of prevailing without relying on mere physical strength or merely conventional authority. We see here a flash of the athletic, graceful Toshiro Mifune of Kurosawa's earlier samurai films.
The running time is 3 hours and 5 minutes -- not as long-seeming after the Lord of the Rings trilogy as it was before -- and offers an Intermission, filled up with music from the film's score. It is a film well worth watching, and not only for Kurosawa's many fans. The Criterion Collection DVD edition offers a fine commentary by film scholar Stephen Prince.
10:06:07 AM 
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