Mifune's first starring role traps you in a snowstorm with thieves, kindness, and inevitable doom.
Three bank robbers, Eijima, Nojiri, and Takasugi, flee the police and escape into the mountains. At an inn high in the Japanese Alps, Eijima and Nojiri encounter a young woman and her father, as well as Honda, a mountaineer. The inn folk do not realize their guests are wanted criminals and the visitors are treated with great kindness. Honda volunteers to lead them over the mountains, but Eijima's paranoia endangers all of them as they make the perilous trip.
Acting
Mifune's volcanic debut — watch him explode then collapse inward.
Cinematography
Actual Hida Mountains location shooting, brutal and beautiful.
Direction
Kurosawa wrote this, and you can feel his fingerprints everywhere.
Director
Senkichi Taniguchi
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This was Mifune's first lead role after winning Toho's 'New Faces' contest. Kurosawa saw this and immediately cast him in Drunken Angel.
Shot in the actual Northern Alps during brutal winter conditions — the actors' breath freezing on camera is completely real.
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