The Akira Kurosawa movie that pushed Toshiro Mifune too far
Between 1948 and 1965, Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune made cinematic magic together on no less than 16 occasions, but as tends to be the case in virtually every walk of life, all good things must come to an end eventually.
Based on Shūgorō Yamamoto’s short story collection Akahige Shinryōtan with a subplot lifted from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Humiliated and Insulted, Red Beard stars Mifune as a grizzled doctor running a small clinic in Koishikawa, where a young doctor secures his first post after medical school working as his assistant.
With big dreams and ambitions of a cushy job, Yûzô Kayama’s Noboru Yasumoto is initially disgruntled by the less glamorous side of his chosen occupation, with Mifune’s title character instructing him to tend to a young prostitute rescued from a local brothel. The leading man is synonymous with all of Kurosawa’s greatest works, but their final collaboration ended up fracturing their relationship permanently.
Having been in such close proximity to one another for so long, it stands to reason that things were far from rosy through the entirety of their fruitful partnership. And yet, Red Beard saw Mifune become frustrated with Kurosawa’s luxurious shooting process, impacting his ability to find further work, convincing him that the end of an era was drawing near.
Principal photography stretched on for two years, with Mifune required to sport a bushy beard for the duration. As well as being unable to play any other roles during the shoot in case he was required to be on set, he was growing wary of his profile potentially stagnating the longer he was kept away from the screen.
Mifune had even established his own production company to further his aspirations and longevity, but with Red Beard dragging on for so long that his newly-founded banner didn’t have any notable projects set up that he could lend his talents to the outfit ended up becoming saddled with debts.
Greatness takes time, but even for such a long-tenured actor as Mifune, dedicating two years of his life to a film that only ran for a shade over three hours in its finished form was a bridge too far. Having regularly notched several credits per year, it’s telling that 1964 – during which Red Beard was in the midst of its lengthy schedule – Hiroshi Inagaki’s historical drama Whirlwind was the only feature he saw released.
By comparison, he was seen in four films in 1963 and five in 1965, so it’s easy to understand why the prolific star had run out of patience with Kurosawa’s time-consuming ways. Just like that, the two would never cross paths in a professional capacity ever again, severing one of the industry’s most important bonds in the process.
