RED BEARD (1965)

Akira Kurosawa is widely considered one of the masters of cinema, and for very good reason. He has made arguably the best samurai film in history, probably the best police procedural ever put on film, and two of the greatest adaptations of William Shakespeare’s works, with Throne of Blood (1957) and Ran (1985), His works drip with heart and tragedy in ways that make them transcend the boundaries of the 20th-century. With such a rich catalogue of films, it’s a testament to his artistry that Red Beard / 赤ひげ isn’t one of the first films that comes to mind. 60 years ago, Red Beard, based on the story “Akahige Shinryōtan” by Shūgorō Yamamoto, was released, cramming everything that makes Kurosawa so influential and dimensional into a three-hour drama about a young physician taken under the wing of an empathetic town doctor.

Dr Noboru Yasumoto (Yûzô Kayama) arrives at the Koishikawa Medical Clinic, led by Dr Kyojô Niide (Toshirô Mifune), otherwise known as ‘Red Beard’, aptly named for his unkempt appearance. Sent by his father, Yasumoto is to relieve Dr Genzô Tsugawa (Tatsuyoshi Ehara), a cynical, lazy young doctor.

Dr Niide is “stubborn, inconsiderate, radical, and proud,” Tsugawa says. This paints a harsh picture in the mind of Yasumoto, who has one foot out the door, waiting to become the Shōgun’s private physician. When Yasumoto learns that he’s forced to stay at the clinic and help the town’s poor, he becomes petulant, ignoring all responsibilities and breaking protocols in an attempt to get kicked out. Still, Dr Niide perseveres, slowly introducing Yasumoto to the patients, thrown into the slums of society, but filled with their own hearts and evils.

This sprawling drama, over the course of three hours, allows us to experience this rich tapestry of people, feeling their pain. But this is told through the lens of these two doctors, one caring, but misunderstood, the other self-serving, yet impressionable. These two central characters are the heart of Red Beard, and the performances from Toshirô Mifune and Yûzô Kayama are worthy of the material.

Last year, I attended the 70th anniversary 4K re-release of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) at Film Forum in New York City. An influential film in its own right with a cast of heavy hitters, the film’s standout performance was Toshiro Mifune. As a drunken, caustic samurai, every time he appeared on screen was a guaranteed laugh. In the sixth collaboration between him and Kurosawa, Mifune had a wide range of roles along with the filmmaker. Red Beard marked the 16th and final collaboration between Mifune and Kurosawa. It’s a staggering final film, cementing this duo as one of the best actor-director pairings of all time.

Instead of the rough, gritty samurai type that he may be better known for, Mifune showcases his range as a quieter, more contemplative doctor. Instead of slicing up bodies, he’s saving them. But, if you were looking for more of his physical acting prowess, don’t worry; he gets to beat up a group of criminals terrorising young sex workers with his bare hands. It’s more like their previous collaboration, High and Low (1963), where the small subtleties of his acting lend themselves to deep humanist musings. Despite the warnings of Tsugawa to Yasumoto, Red Beard never feels like a cold, callous doctor. Even without saying much, he has the aura of a nurturing teacher who wants to help everyone. Even with the mob he fights off, he still ensures they get the medical care they need, apologising for his acts of violence. This strong sense of moral clarity is so pervasive in this character and played with such calm gravitas by Mifune. In his autobiography, Akira Kurosawa sang his praises of Mifune:

“Mifune had a kind of talent I’d never encountered before in the Japanese film world; it was above all the speed with which he expressed himself that was astounding. The ordinary Japanese actor might need ten feet of film to get in across an impression; Mifune needed only three feet. The speed of his movements was such that he said in a single action what took ordinary actors three separate movements to express. He put forth everything directly and boldly and a sense of timing was the cleanest I’d ever seen in a Japanese actor and yet with all the quickness he had also had surprisingly fine sensibilities.”

“What a serene note to part on,” film critic Roger Ebert wrote about Mifune and Kurosawa’s final collaboration. While I will remember Mifune most for his comedic masterclass in Seven Samurai, his moral conundrum in High and Low, and even his selfless heroics in The Hidden Fortress (1958), Red Beard cements his status as one of Japan’s finest acting talents.

However, in Red Beard, despite it drawing from his name, the real story belongs to Yûzô Kayama and his portrayal of the self-important Dr Yasumoto. Equally as subtle and perhaps even more powerful is the way Kayama is able to express growth on the screen. From the childish tantrums at the beginning to the fear on his face seeing an old man gasp his last breath, Yasumoto’s growth is slow and well-earned. As he’s told to spend time with dying patients and care for the poor in ways he never thought important, he slowly morphs not just into a doctor, but a human. All this culminates in a suiting-up moment into a doctor’s uniform that is as exciting as any superhero suit reveal ever.

Red Beard features one of Kurosawa’s greatest ensembles. Given the film’s runtime, Kurosawa can give depth to the people who help turn the heart of Yasumoto. Much of the second half of the film is devoted to Otoyo (Terumi Niki), the young sex worker who becomes Yasumoto’s first patient. Niki, who wasn’t even 16 at the film’s release, seared herself in my mind; it’s hard to believe she was not on screen for the first two hours.

The depth that Kurosawa can give to side characters in Red Beard is extraordinary. There’s an excellent frame story within the film where Sahachi (Tsutomu Yamazaki), the town saint, on his deathbed, calls the town together to tell everyone the sad story of the woman he loved. The rich imagery used in the flashbacks, depicting the darkness and silhouettes of doomed lovers, is so engrossing. When the camera pans back to a roomful of sorrowful people crying at Sahachi’s story, it’s hilarious but also cathartic for the audience and Yasumoto. Kurosawa gives so much room for every emotion to be felt in Red Beard, with not a second wasted on screen.

One of Kurosawa’s greatest strengths as a director is his ability to let the actors command the whole screen. He utilises this technique so beautifully in Red Beard. It’s a slow film. There’s a sense of nearly stage-like direction, where longer shots give two actors in the same room time to move around and discover how they would react to each other. It’s so absorbing, and Kurosawa’s blocking of these moments is so beneficial to this character-driven narrative. There’s a scene during the second act, after the interval, where Yasumoto and a nurse hide in the drying clothes while Otoyo scolds a young thief who had stolen food to feed his parents and two older brothers. Otoyo tells him she will leave leftover food out every night for him, leaving the nurse in tears at the sacrifice by this young woman. The composition of the shot is so affecting. How he can fill the entire screen with such moving imagery is a mystery to me, and something so missing in much of our modern cinema.

Kurosawa’s devotion to recreating this specific place and time shows a man infatuated with the craft. Even every drawer that is never opened on screen is filled with 19th-century-accurate medical equipment to complete the illusion of this clinic. For a film so specifically rooted in the time, its themes are so distinctly transcendent.

“I believe this film should be seen by every medical student,” Ebert wrote. “It fearlessly regards the meanings of life and death.” I would go even further and say everyone should watch it. Some of Kurosawa’s best work, including High and Low and Ikiru (1952), is so deeply contemplative of our time on earth. To see Red Beard, his calm, gruff demeanour just an affront to his empathetic nature, to be so devoted to the poor, who are so thrown away by the elites, is very heartwarming. For all the sadness and death it portrays, Red Beard is one of Kurosawa’s most uplifting films.

I was drawn to a quote from Kurosawa’s autobiography where he described giving Mifune more roles than the typical gangster, rough roles he began his career in.

“An actor who is not constantly given new roles and new subjects to tackle dries out and withers like a tree you plant in the garden and then fail to water.”

In Red Beard, we see this play out in the lives of some deeply troubled and poor people. The nurture they get from helping others, from seeing others be selfless and admit their own mistakes, is exactly the type of thing that makes us human. Kurosawa spent his career examining this subject through the photographic lens of a painter turned filmmaker. That is what makes his films so timeless and his filmography so deep. Red Beard may not be as widely remembered as the other great films of Kurosawa’s career, but it’s another example of why we continue to enjoy his art.

JAPAN | 1965 | 185 MINUTES | 2.35:1 | BLACK & WHITE | JAPANESE

Cast & Crew

director: Akira Kurosawa
writers: Masato Ide, Hideo Oguni, Ryûzô Kikushima & Akira Kurosawa (based on the story “Akahige Shinryōtan” by Shūgorō Yamamoto).
starring: Toshiro Mifune, Yūzō Kayama, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Reiko Dan, Miyuki Kuwano, Kyōko Kagawa, Tatsuyoshi Ehara, Terumi Niki, Akemi Negishi, Yoshitaka Zushi, Yoshio Tsuchiya & Takashi Shimura.