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(★)(In the West very little is known about Mifune´s personal and professional life ; incredibly, until now an English-language biography did not exist. Newspapers and magazine articles reported only that he grew up in Manchuria, China, born of Japanese parents, and didn´t set foot on Japanese soil until he was twenty years old. He became an actor almost by accident : an aerial photographer during World War II, Mifune went to Toho Studios after the war hoping to get a job as an assistant cameraman. Somehow he wound up applying to the studio´s ´New Face Contest´, and was nearly rejected by a panel of judges who were insulted by the actor´s apparent disrespect. Actress Hideko Takamine, director Kajiro Yamamoto (Kurosawa´s mentor), and Kurosawa himself saw a raw and unusual talent in this obstinate, unpretentious wanderer. He achieved stardom with Kurosawa´s ´Drunken Angel (1948)´, in what was just his third film. It was as if he had sprung out of nowhere, a concept the actor perpetuated in almost every interview he ever gave. Toshiro Mifune starred in sixteen of Akira Kurosawa´s thirty films. No pairing --neither Bunuel and Fernando Rey nor Ingmar Bergman and Max von Sydow, nor Scorsese and De Niro-- can match their incredible track record. (Director Yasujiro Ozu and actor Chishu Ryu in some ways eclipse Kurosawa and Mifune in terms of their cinematic output, but Ryu´s roles were typically less central to Ozu´s films.) And just as Kurosawa has influenced several generations of directors and screenwriters, Mifune´s screen persona paved the way for thirty years´ worth of roaming, warrior rogues. Could there have been a Clint Eastwood or a Harrison Ford or a Chow Yun-Fat without Mifune? In my interviews with actors, directors, and others who worked with Mifune, the actor´s offscreen personality is often likened to that of a wolf or a lion. Like Kurosawa, Mifune was a heavy drinker, and much like the characters he often played, he was, certainly in his early years, outsized and larger-than-life. Parly because his films were so expensive (by Japanese standards), it took the financial assistance of the Soviet Union to produce his film, ´Dersu Uzala´, and the intervention and financial assurance of George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola to make ´Kagemusha´. And though these films, as well as the French-financed ´Ran´, won numerous international awards and proved popular worldwide, the director seemingly could not escape has-been status in his own country. For many Japanese critics, Kurosawa simply had nothing new or substantial left to say. This attitude culminated in 1985, when, in spite of the resounding success of ´Ran´, Japan´s Movie Producers Association appeared to snub the director, submitting another film as Japan´s official entry in the Foreign Film category in that year´s Oscar race. An outcry from the Directors Guild of America led to a grass-roots nomination for Kurosawa as Best Director, but by then the damage had already been done. Kurosawa and Mifune died less than nine months apart, and in the West, obituaries and tributes likened their work, as had been the case for decades, to American Westerns. But their films together, and many of those done separately, strike much deeper. Kurosawa´s films were, first and foremost, deeply humanist pictures, films which effortlessly transcended cultures and centuries.This is the first English-language biography of Kurosawa (or Mifune, for that matter), something long overdue. Kurosawa´s best films transcend motion picture art --he was one of the few filmmakers whose work has an almost religious effect on moviegoers. Surely one of his greatest films, ´Ikiru´, about a dying government worker coming to terms with his own life and death, is, for many, a life-changing experience. For all the praise heaped on his films by critics and film theorists who admire his use of color, telephoto lenses, editing, staging, and multiple cameras, nearly all fail to mention the deeply personal impact of his films. For many, this writer included, Kurosawa was a ´sensei´, a teacher, perhaps self-consciously so in his later films, whose life lessons influenced not just other filmmakers but moviegoers around the world, regardless of class, race, and cultures. For Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune was less an alter ego than an instrument through which his screenplays were best interpreted. Their faith in one another resulted in their own self-discovery. In this work, it is my hope to uncover the essence of these two great artists. [from ´INTRODUCTION´]) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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