Exactly 40 years ago, the great Japanese director Akira Kurasawa watched an audition by a hopelessly untrained actor who clearly had no idea what he was doing.
Kurasawa then proceeded to make him the most famous movie star in Japanese film history.
Toshiro Mifune–star of such Kurasawa classics as ”Rashomon,” ”The Seven Samurai” and ”Yojimbo”–now 65, remembers that audition as if it happened yesterday. Seated in a hotel room in Montreal, where he`s a judge for the Montreal World Film Festival, he grabs a straight-backed chair and plays himself at age 26.
”One judge asked me to laugh,” he recalls of the audition, which a friend at Japan`s renowned Toho studios had gotten for him. ”I said, `Why should I laugh? Nothing is funny.`
”Another judge said, `Get angry.` I answered, `Why should I get angry?`
I got so disgusted that, instead of being proper, I acted bored. They said,
`Get out.` ”
Fortunately for Mifune and the future of international cinema, an actress named Takamine Hideka had been observing the audition. During the lunch break, she raced elsewhere at Toho to Kurasawa and told the director about this fantastic unformed talent. Kurasawa showed up for the afternoon portion of the audition.
As Mifune remembers: ”They asked me the same dumb questions, so I let it all out at them, every foul word: `Damn SOBs!` ”
The judges were angered–but Kurasawa sat there transfixed. As the director recalled in his 1982 autobiography, ”Something Like an
Autobiography”: ”A young man was reeling around the room in a violent frenzy. It was as frightening as watching a wounded or trapped savage beast trying to break loose. . . . I found this young man strangely attractive. . . .”
This awesome energy is Mifune`s trademark. As Kurasawa wrote in the memoir: ”It was, above all, the speed with which he expressed himself that was astounding. The ordinary Japanese actor might need 10 feet of film to get across an impression; Mifune needed only three feet. . . .”
Kurasawa attended the jury meeting after the auditions, and he lobbied mightily for Mifune. Several people switched their negative votes; Mifune squeezed through to be hired as an actor at Toho Studios. He played a violent bank robber in Senkichi Taniguchi`s ”To the End of the Silver Mountains,” a gangster boss in Kajiro Yamomoto`s ”New Age of Fools” and finally, in 1948, a memorably rendered racketeer in ”Drunken Angel” for Kurasawa.
But it was only with ”Rashomon” in 1951, the first Japanese film to make an impact in the West, that both Kurasawa and Mifune became
internationally recognized.
”Rashomon” won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and also the Academy Award for best foreign film. Mifune became associated forever with his role as the swaggering macho bandit.
For this interview, Mifune becomes as excited as a hyperactive juvenile, jumping up from his seat, racing around the hotel room to punctuate his anecdotes, breaking into imaginary sword fights and samurai battles and in general tiring out his poor female translator, who simply can`t keep up with him.
” `Rashomon` was a failure in Japan,” Mifune remembers. ”We had no idea that it had been submitted to Venice. Kurasawa didn`t go to the festival, nor did I. And hardly anyone knew it won the grand prize. There was a small article in a Japanese paper, that was all.”
In 1952 Mifune went to act for another cinema master, Kenzi Mizoguchi
(Ugetsu), considered by many modern-day film critics as the greatest Japanese director of all. For ”The Life of Oharu,” Mizoguchi told his new star on the first day: ”Mr. Mifune, you have done films with Kurasawa for years. There is nothing I can instruct you. Do what you think is right.”
Mizoguchi died in 1954, but Mifune remembers him well, and offers a rare glimpse of Mizoguchi on the set. ”He was a rather complex person and a perfectionist. A scene with a famous actress wasn`t going well, so Mizoguchi dismissed everyone for the day so they could quietly talk. He was a stickler for props. If an object would be used in the movie for tea time, he might look at it and say, `This is a reproduction!` He would close down the set and order the prop man, `Get the original in Kyoto.` ”
For the benefit of the interviewer, Mifune improvises an extraordinary, once-in-a-lifetime Mizoguchi imitation. He lowers eyeglasses to pinch his nose, and squats to examine an imaginary prop, grumbing in Japanese that the prop isn`t right! ”Mizoguchi was an artist, a professional,” Mifune says with respect, standing upright.
Did Mifune ever quarrel with Kurasawa?
”Yes, on `Yojimbo.` One day, Kurasawa said, `I won`t mention names, but the actors are late.` I said: `What are you talking about? I`m the actor.`
Every day after that, when Kurasawa arrived, I would be there already, in costume and makeup from 6 a.m. I showed him.”
A quarter-century later, Mifune still smarts from this insult to his dignity on the 1961 samurai film. He adds: ”No matter how much I drank the night before, I never once was late on his films. But with Kurasawa, sometimes people are waiting, and he never shows up. The people go to his house, and he says: `I`m sorry. I don`t feel well today.` ”
Mifune stops telling stories, lights a Cartier cigarette from his ebony holder and autographs photographs of himself as a fierce samurai. What will he do after the Montreal festival? He is off to London to play a lawyer in an English-language picture. No, he doesn`t know the name of the movie, but he is excited. He has never played a lawyer before.
What is the secret of his indefatigable energy?
Mifune chortles. ”I still ride horses, and do lots of laughing. But I was born this way. I can`t help it. When I was young, I played old men`s roles. But now I`m an old boy!”
Yet, after 132 films spanning four turbulent decades, Mifune has not had a major role in six years. The half-dozen scripts he is now reading are typecast and unappealing, some samurai-brand spaghetti Westerns.
Although he won every major award under director Kurosawa, they have not worked together in more than two decades. Yet Mifune remains Japan`s best-known actor, in heavy demand as a cocktail and dinner guest. He still cuts a wide swath through Tokyo nightlife and a dashing figure in tuxedo and the black 1961 Rolls Royce he self-mockingly calls ”a hearse they will someday bury me in.”
His sole lament is what he sees as the incipient death of film.
”When we were young there were classics, memorable films, good actors and actresses,” he recalls wistfully. ”Now there are so very, very few good films. There may be some good people out there trying to make some. I don`t want to give up all hope. But I`m very disappointed today.”
His perception is magnified by the erosion of the film business in Japan. Since the 1960s, the ”golden age” of Japanese film, movie releases and ticket sales have sunk to record lows, while the number of theaters has fallen from more than 7,000 to about 2,000.
Even hints of a renaissance led by Kurosawa`s latest samurai epic,
”Ran,” have proven deceiving, since the film fared poorly in Japan, doing better overseas.
”It`s the leisure industry to blame, and television,” Mifune says.
”Nobody goes to movies anymore. Three of the big five studios have closed. And just look at television here–game shows, music shows, quiz shows. It`s all a rehash of American TV 20 years ago.”
That also is a bit ironic since Mifune Productions–his small studio in a western Tokyo suburb–turned to television years ago to survive.
While his lone-warrior roles in 1950s films like ”The Seven Samurai”
blazed a kind of Clint Eastwood trail for a genre of solitary anti-heroes, critics say Mifune`s studio has trivialized them by churning out countless samurai soap operas.
Mifune shrugs, noting that economic necessity has forced many changes. In the early 1980s, in debt and struggling, Mifune Productions sold off an adjacent plot of land and built the condominium where Mifune now lives.
That launched a real estate enterprise on which he now spends most of his time, leaving daily studio affairs to his eldest son, Shiro.
”I never thought I`d be in this business,” he concedes. ”It just shows how the movie industry has declined. I`m just being logical.”
Mifune is also discouraged by American film and cannot recall the last movie he saw. He praises directors Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, though he says too much of Hollywood has tried to ape their success with kiddie movies.
Today, Mifune`s major pleasure is his daughter, Mika. He is up before 7 each morning to get her ready for an English preschool. When she returns, accompanied by their York terrier, Miki, things can get confusing around the Mifune home.
While much of Mifune`s current lifestyle may appear to be more that of a wealthy businessman than Japan`s greatest film hero, invitations to endless parties attest to his continued popularity.
”You just can`t ignore the invitations,” he sighs. ”Sometimes it`s just day after day, Cartier, Lanvin, Gucci, the French Embassy. . . .”
