Word: bearding
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...audience for Kurosawa films in the U.S. has been severely limited by the vagaries of film distribution. Although Rashomon became an art-house staple after it won an Academy Award in 1951, most of Kurosawa's other films have not found their way to many American screens. Red Beard, like Pierrot Le Fou first shown in 1965 but just released in New York, is being presented at a special foreign-language theater with only a whisper of publicity. Thus, filmgoers across the country may once again miss a masterpiece by one of the world's great film makers...
...What. Red Beard is an oriental Pilgrim's Progress. In 19th century Japan, an ambitious young doctor (Yuzo Kayama) pays a formal call on the director of a public-health clinic. There he is shocked to find that he has been given a post as a mere intern...
Stung by the indignity of the assignment, he rebels against the hospital rules, refuses to wear a uniform and grows careless of his patients' needs. Only the silent, looming presence of the head of the clinic, who has been nicknamed Red Beard, prevents the irate young man from quitting altogether. "This place is terrible," a fellow intern tells the young man. "The patients are all slum people; they're full of fleas - they even smell bad. Being here makes you wonder why you ever wanted to be come a doctor." It is through Red Beard (Toshiro Mifune) that...
...beaten at the age of nine; a wheelwright working even as he dies in penance for an imagined evil; a young girl, orphaned and being kept captive by syphilitic whores. Their tragedies begin gradually to touch the young doctor until, at film's end, he finally tells Red Beard that he wants to remain at the clinic. "You'll regret it," grumbles Red Beard, turning to hide his pleasure...
Like Balthazar B, James Patrick Donleavy, who is currently on a U.S. lecture tour, is a shy man with fine features and a soft, halting voice. And like Balthazar, he compensates for his shyness with a bold appearance, in this case, a scraggly Van Gogh kind of beard, heavy tweeds and knickers (augmented in foul weather by a cape and a Sherlock Holmes hat), and a walking stick. To all outward appearances, then, he seems like a turn-of-the-century product of the British Isles. In fact, he was born in Brooklyn of Irish parents...