Red Beard

Starring: Toshir Mifune, Yuzo Kayama Director: Akira Kurosawa Original UK Premiere: 1965 Dvd Release: 6th October, 2003 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, PAL, Subtitled, Widescreen, Region 2 Encoding Subtitled In: English

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Red Beard is a 1964 film by Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. The film takes place in a small town in 19th-century Japan. Dr Noboru Yasumoto has been assigned to a rural clinic for his post-graduate medical training under the guidance of Dr Kyojio Niide, Akahige. Yasumoto, trained in Dutch medical schools in order to become the personal physician of the Japanese Shogunate is livid at his posting. What has he to gain from Akahige ? Red Beard was adapted from a novel by Shugoro Yamamoto. Fyodor Dostoevskys novel The Insulted & the Injured provides a major subplot about a young girl, Otoyo, who is rescued from a brothel. Kurosawa also draws upon Dostoevsky for his film Hakuchi. existential humanism & existentialism. Uzala The protagonist, Dr Yasumoto, is an arrogant young doctor who aspires for the status of personal physician of the Shogun. Dr. Niide is a tyrannical task master but also a compassionate clinic director. Dr. Yasumoto feels that Dr. Niide is only interested in his medical notes & soon rebels against the clinic director. Posters Of Red Beard

Red Beard is arguably Kurosawas most humane film, & 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 & by purposely breaking the hospital rules. The head of the clinic, Kyojo Niide played by the great Toshiro Mifune, brings the young intern round after an insane patient attempts to murder him. It is Red Beards hard-nosed thesis of the patients condition that impresses him, & it is from here that he begins to take up his duties with sincerity, & face the degredation of the citys slums.

Laced with three-dimensional characters, & dialogue that eschews sentimentality, this is an epic concerning the human condition, & was sadly the last film that Kurosawa & Mifune would make together.

Akira Kurosawa was a prominent Japanese director, producer & screenwriter of movies. To Western audiences, Kurosawa is perhaps Japans best-known filmmaker. His films have greatly influenced a whole generation of filmmakers worldwide. His first film was released in 1943 ; his last in 1999. During his lifetime he saw Japan change from an undeveloped country with military ambitions to a peaceful economic power. Few filmmakers have had a career so long or so acclaimed. Kurosawa was born March 23, 1910, in Omori, Tokyo the youngest of seven children .He trained as a painter & began work in the film industry as an assistant director in 1936. He made his directorial debut in 1943 with Sugata Sanshiro. He became internationally famous with his 1950 film Rashomon which won the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival. Although he is most remembered for his films of the 1950s & 1960s, he continued to direct & write films until his death. Kurosawa is most well-known for his period pieces like Seven Samurai & Ran but many of his films dealt with contemporary Japan. Posters Of Kagemusha

Editors Choice: Rhapsody In August, Ran, Kagemusha, Red Beard, Sanjuro, Yojimbo, Hidden Fortress, Throne Of Blood, View DVDology

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