Red Beard

Red Beard

Red Beard (Japanese: 赤ひげ, Hepburn: Akahige) is a 1965 Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa about the relationship between a town doctor and his new trainee. It takes place in Koishikawa, a district of Edo, towards the end of the Tokugawa period. The film was based on Shūgorō Yamamoto's 1959 short story collection, Akahige Shinryōtan (赤ひげ診療譚). Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel Humiliated and Insulted provided the source for a subplot about a young girl, Otoyo (Terumi Niki), who is rescued from a brothel.The film looks at the problem of social injustice and explores two of Kurosawa's favorite topics: humanism and existentialism. A few critics have noted the film to be reminiscent in some ways of Ikiru. Red Beard is the last black and white film of Kurosawa. The film was a major box office success in Japan but is notorious for having caused a rift between Mifune and Kurosawa, with this being the final collaboration between them after working on 16 films together. The film was screened in competition at the 26th Venice International Film Festival. Toshiro Mifune won a volpi cup for best actor for his performance in the film. It was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film.

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