Sanjuro

directed by
Akira Kurosawa


Japan 1962

Now, this movie is what you want to watch on a rainy Sunday afternoon in November
(instead of The Bad Sleep Well).



It is a parody on all those samurai films, and a darned good one, too. By which I mean that it is much more exciting than the not-so-original originals. But for starters, it's full of laughs. Mifune is followed around by a bunch of kids who would be sword fighters; it reminds you of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. A great encounter between Mifune and Nakadai.
To my feeling Nakadai is the better actor, and this, I have been told by Noune Hiroshi (Toho's Man in Paris), was the consensus in Japan. Mifune can be a great actor, but when he is not working for Kurosawa, he just yells and jumps around a bit about sums it up. Mifune himself states that he does not feel he has done anything worthwhile except under Kurosawa (in the press book of Red Beard).

My favorite scenes?
— Mifune comes back from killing some troublesome guys (a business that keeps him well-occupied in this movie)
when a woman it all has to be done for gently chides him that it's rude to kill so many people.
— A hostage kept by Mifune's gang gets so involved with his captors that he starts sympathizing with them
much to his embarrassment when he realizes this.
—I really don't prefer it over some other ones, but the final confrontation between Mifune and Nakadai is not a bad little scene at all.
In Samuel Peckinpah's western The Wild Bunch the director kept yelling for Blood! I want more blood!. But this is doing him one better, and much earlier, too. More tasteful, as it were. Maybe because of that chiding woman on the set?

Again, only a few stills

How a still photographer can run into trouble
when working for a well-framed widescreen production

"Blood! More blood!"

96 minutes - B/W - TohoScope

Credits:		Cast:
executive producers screenplay by based on the novel by photographed by music by	Tomoyuki Tanaka Ryuzo Kikushima Ryuzo Kikushima Hideo Oguni Akira Kurosawa Shugoro Yamamoto Fukozo Koizumi Masaru Sato	Toshiro Mifune Tatsuya Nakadai Yuzo Kayama Takashi Shimura Kamatari Fujiwara Yunosuke Ito Takako Irie Reiko Dan	Sanjuro Tsubaki Hanbei Muroto Iiro Izaka Kurofuji Takebayashi Mutsuta his wife Chidori, his daughter

Sanjuro

Akira Kurosawa's sequel to ``Yojimbo.'' Toshiro Mifune returns as the somewhat shabby samurai who comes to the aid of nine young warriors attempting to bring about the end of a corrupt regime. Tatsuya Nakadai, Takashi Shimura.

Widescreen; Soundtrack: Japanese Dolby Digital mono; Subtitles: English; theatrical trailer; behind-the-scenes footage.

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