Toshiro Mifune @ 100: Stray Dog
Team Experience will be celebrating the Centennial of Japan's great movie star Toshiro Mifune for the next five nights. Here's Lynn Lee...
It’s impossible to think of Toshiro Mifune without thinking of Akira Kurosawa—and vice versa. Their partnership was unparalleled in its cinematic impact, spanning 16 films between 1948 and 1965 that included stone-cold classics like Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, The Hidden Fortress, and Yojimbo. While Mifune and Kurosawa did significant work independent of each other, it’s not exaggerating to say they made each other; both men would acknowledge as much even after their falling out. In Mifune, Kurosawa found the perfect player to convey the outsize emotions and imposing physical presence of his most memorable protagonists—typically men of strong passions and even stronger will, whether turned to honorable or horrible ends...