Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27029 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-10-06
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Black & White, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: Japanese
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 172 minutes

Synopsis
The final collaboration between Kurosawa and Mifune, RED BEARD tells the story of a doctor in a rural clinic in late-19th century Japan. He teaches his new intern the meaning of responsibilty through a master-pupil relationship, a constantly recurring theme in Kurosawa's work.

Customer Reviews

Kurosawa at his finest
This is not, of course, the “Chinese” version (meaning the cheap Hong Kong version of the film, which is a sub-standard English translation of a Chinese translation of the original Japanese). This BFI edition of Red Beard comes with an excellent English subtitle translation, though minus the informative Stephen Prince commentary that graced the US Criterion release.

The film? Red Beard belongs in the short-list of Kurosawa masterpieces alongside Seven Samurai, Rashomon, Throne of Blood and Ikiru. In many ways it is the crowning achievement of one of the most fruitful director-star partnerships in cinema history. The great Toshiro Mifune plays the eponymous hero: a humanitarian doctor managing a clinic committed to the treatment of the poor. His charge becomes the education of a freshly graduated doctor, initially drawn to the wealthy, in whom he instils an understanding of the limits of medical knowledge and the importance of compassion. Thus it is another Kurosawa film about a master and pupil, this time with Death itself as the adversary against which the heroes battle. Astonishing attention to detail, – the period setting is fastidiously recreated – first-rate performances, and a director working at the peak of his powers. Strange to think that the breaking of the partnership would usher in a long period of doubt and artistic uncertainty for the master.

Kurosawa and Mifune's parting of the ways
Red Beard was Kurosawa and Mifune's last collaboration, and it's not hard to see why the actor parted ways with his sensei even if the shoot hadn't dragged on for two years (during which time Kurosawa insisted he keep his beard, preventing him from taking other roles). Although it's not a bad film, Mifune is required more as a presence than an actor. Instead the focus is on Yuzo Kayama's arrogant young doctor furious at being assigned to a slum area hospital and his journey from pride to service.

In many ways it feels remarkably similar to The Cardinal, with even Masaru Sato's excellent score sharing much of the flavor of Jerome Moross' score for the Preminger film, albeit with a much more strident counterpoint in the final cue that stakes the films claim to militance over reverence. It's a heartfelt and humane film, but it tends to wander more towards soap opera as it moves unhurriedly to its foregone conclusion. That said, the totally gratuitous fight scene IS fun.

The BFI's DVD release offers nothin substantial in the way of special features, but does offer a good 2.35:1 transfer, although it is irritating that the subtitles are laid over the picture rather than set against the black border.

Akira Kurosawa's 'Red Beard'
Red Beard (1965) is arguably Kurosawa's most humane film, and his probing of the human condition is at its most thorough. Set at the end of the Tokugawa period, a young man learns that he is to work as an intern at a public clinic in the slums of Edo, instead of the court medical staff to which he had aspired. He rebels by refusing to wear a uniform and by purposely breaking the hospital rules. The head of the clinic, Kyojo Niide (aka Red Beard) played by the great Toshiro Mifune, brings the young intern round after an insane patient attempts to murder him. It is Red Beard's hard-nosed thesis of the patient's condition that impresses him, and it is from here that he begins to take up his duties with sincerity, and face the degredation of the city's slums.
Laced with three-dimensional characters, and dialogue that eschews sentimentality, this is an epic concerning the human condition, and was sadly the last film that Kurosawa and Mifune would make together.