Director Steven Okazaki – 2015 – US – Cert. 12 – 80m
*****
Currently streaming on BFI Player as part of Japan 2020.
Toshiro Mifune (1920-1997) is director Akira Kurosawa’s iconic star of his samurai movies Rashomon, Seven Samurai and Yojimbo. He’s the subject of three time Oscar-nominated documentary film maker Steven Okazaki’s useful documentary Mifune The Last Samurai (2015). As narrator Keanu Reeves says in voice-over, without Mifune there would have been no Magnificent Seven, Eastwood would not have had A Few Dollars More and Darth Vader would not have been a samurai.
The documentary spends a good twenty minutes on background Japanese history, early Japanese film and Mifune’s life before his career in movies began.
He got into movie acting by accident, having originally applied to work at Toho Studios as a camera assistant. Kurosawa spotted him there, immediately recognised a unique quality and decided he wanted to work with him as an actor. The pair would go on to make sixteen films together.
I review Mifune The Last Samurai for All The Anime.
You can watch the film on BFI Player as part of Japan 2020.