Red Beard (1965)
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Producer: Akira Kurosawa
Writer: Akira Kurosawa
Cast: Yuzo Kayama, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Reiko Dan, Miyuki Kuwano
Running Time: 185 min.
Plot: In a charity hospital, a hard-bitten but honorable older doctor, Dr. Niide, takes a young intern under his guidance through the course of a number of difficult cases.
Kurosawa’s last great humanist masterpiece (Ran, his last full-out masterpiece, was nihilist more than humanist); his last black-and-white picture, and his last movie with Toshiro Mifune, the great actor whose relationship with Kurosawa was key to the creation of more than fifteen great classics of world cinema. This was also the greatest success of Kurosawa’s career, a 3-hour plus epic that everyone in Japan turned out to see.
A young doctor (pop singing star of the day Yuzo Kayama), full of pride and expecting to become the Shogun’s personal doctor, arrives at the Koshikawa clinic to pay a call on the head doctor. He is surprised to find that, in fact the gruff head doctor, feared by his staff and knicknamed “Red Beard,” has kidnapped him, fixing things so that he is indentured to the clinic rather than to the Shogunate. Furious, he rebells against Red Beard’s edicts, but the events of the weeks lead him to appreciate Red Beard’s unorthodox medical methods and his dedication to healing.
The film was detailed excessively, taking nearly two years to complete. But Kurosawa has brought about perfect performances from his cast and his skill at scenecraft is perhaps the greatest of all filmmakers. While a great deal of the film consists of dialogue-heavy scenes, Red Beard plays as an exciting film, with every event, from a dip into flashback to a quick run through a garden, is exciting and powerfully wrought. A true cinematic classic.
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