Film Forum

Japan, 1965
Directed by Kihachi Okamoto
Starring Toshirō Mifune, Koshiro Matsumoto, Yūnosuke Itō, Michiyo Aratama
35mm print courtesy Japan Foundation. Approx. 122 min.

1860; and while “snow seldom falls in March,” it’s coming down hard as progressive regent Naosuke Ii starts his heavily guarded daily procession, even as fanatical anti-shogunate samurai move in for their attack. Mifune’s fictional character, an often unsympathetic, embittered, wrong-headed loser, is arguably his most complex non-Kurosawa portrait. A tour-de-force in dynamic framing for the wide screen.