Red Beard

赤ひげ Red Beard
Directed by	Akira Kurosawa
Produced by	Ryuzo Kikushima Tomoyuki Tanaka
Written by	Masato Ide Ryuzo Kikushima Akira Kurosawa Hideo Oguni
Starring	Toshirō Mifune Yuzo Kayama
Release date(s)	3 April, 1965 19 January, 1966
Running time	185 min.
Language	Japanese
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

For other uses, see Red Beard (disambiguation)

Red Beard (Japanese: 赤ひげ, Akahige) is a 1965 Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa about the relationship between a village doctor and his new trainee. It is an adaptation of a novel by Shugoro Yamamoto. Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Insulted and the Injured provided the source for a subplot about a young girl, Otoyo (Terumi Niki), who is rescued from a brothel. Kurosawa also draws upon Dostoevsky for his film The Idiot. Red Beard looks at the problem of social injustice and explores two of Kurosawa's favourite topics: existential humanism and existentialism.

Plot

The film takes place in Edo (the former name of the city of Tokyo), in the 19th century. Young Dr. Noboru Yasumoto (Yuzo Kayama) is the film's protagonist. Trained in Dutch medical schools, the arrogant Yasumoto aspires to the status of personal physician of the Shogunate. For Yasumoto's post-graduate medical training, he has been assigned to a rural clinic under the guidance of Akahige ("Red Beard"), Dr. Kyojio Niide (played by Toshirō Mifune). Dr. Niide may seem like a tyrannical task master, but in reality he is a compassionate clinic director. Initially, Yasumoto is livid at his posting, believing that he has little to gain from working under Akahige. After falling ill, Yasumoto is nursed to health by the care and affection of a 12 year old girl who was saved from a brothel. Dr. Yasumoto feels that Dr. Niide is only interested in his medical notes and soon rebels against the clinic director. He refuses to wear his uniform, disdains the food and spartan environment, and enters the forbidden garden where he meets "The Mantis" (Kyoko Kagawa), a mysterious patient that only Dr. Niide can treat. Through his observations of Dr. Niide's compassion and a series of destitute patients, Dr. Yasumoto learns what being a doctor really means. The lives of patients are more important than wealth or status. Their suffering can be ameliorated with compassion and conscientious care.

Toshirō Mifune as Akahige.

Production

According to the commentary on the Criterion Collection DVD Red Beard is 185 minutes long and was shot at an aspect ratio of 2.35:1. It was Kurosawa's first film to make use of a magnetic 4-track stereo soundtrack and principal photography took two years. The set was intended to be historicaly accurate: the crew went as far as to use the right kind of aged wood that would have been used in the region at the time the film is set, at Kurosawa's request.

As a Kurosawa film

Red Beard is the last of numerous films in which Kurosawa worked with Mifune. It is also Kurosawa's last black-and-white film. According to the DVD commentary by film scholar Stephen Prince, this is also the only Kurosawa film to feature nudity (in a scene where doctors operate on a woman without the use of anesthetics).

Cast

• Toshirō Mifune - Dr. Kyojio Niide, Akahige ("Red Beard")
• Yuzo Kayama - Dr. Noboru Yasumoto
• Kyoko Kagawa - "The Mantis" or "Madwoman"
• Terumi Niki - Otoyo

External links

• Red Beard (Akahige)
• Red Beard (Criterion Collection)
• Red Beard at the Internet Movie Database
• 赤ひげ (Akahige) (Japanese). Japanese Movie Database. Retrieved on 2007-07-17.