Word: toshiro
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Samurai (at the Telepix). A superior Far Eastern "Western," recounting the life of the legendary Japanese warrior Musashi, powerfully portrayed by Toshiro (Rashomon) Mifune. Handsomely color-photographed, this won an Academy Award as "best foreign film." For those whose Japanese is shaky, there are excellent English subtitles...
...field to find sanctuary in an isolated farmhouse, where a mother and daughter dress their wounds. One of the men, Rentaro Mikuni, longs to go back home to the girl he left behind, but he is weak-willed, and the women use him for their own purpose. The other, Toshiro Mifune, is a bullnecked, snarling ruffian who dreams of avenging the lost battle by becoming a great samurai. He soon has a chance when a rabble of bandits raid the farm. Toshiro kills the bandit chief and routs his men, then becomes a beast of the hills. He sweeps back...
Samurai now propounds its moral: that a headstrong man is of no use to his nation unless he is tamed by virtue. While regiments of armed men scour the hills for Toshiro, a deceptively jolly priest (Kuroemon Onoe) and a frightened girl (Kaoru Yachigusa) ensnare him with kindness. Brought home, Toshiro is trussed up like a maniac and suspended from a tall tree. Each morning and evening the priest inquires if his spirit is broken, and Toshiro answers with howling curses. The girl frees the prisoner, but the wily priest traps Toshiro again, this time locks him in a tower...
Brilliantly acted, Rashomon bulges with barbaric force. The bandit (Toshiro Mifune) is an unforgettable animal figure, grunting, sweating, swatting at flies that constantly light on his half-naked body, exploding in hyena-like laughter of scorn and triumph. But, more than a violent story, the film is a harsh study of universal drives stripped down to the core: lust, fear, selfishness, pride, hatred, vanity, cruelty. The woodcutter's version of the crime lays bare the meanness of man with Swiftian bitterness and contempt...