![]() It did cause problems for the cast and crew, however. Each time, Kurosawa, knowing that he’d shot enough of the film that Toho would have no choice but to start it up again, would calmly go fishing and wait for the go-ahead to be given. Given that Toho were shooting the expensive “ Godzilla” simultaneously, it pushed the company to the verge of bankruptcy, and they shut production down on two separate occasions. The film was certainly planned to be Kurosawa‘s biggest endeavor to date, but it turned out to be much bigger than backers Toho Studios had planned, with Kurosawa quadrupling the budget, which rose to around $500,000, on a shoot that took 148 days, spread over a year. The film went wildly over schedule and budget, and production was shut down at least twice. He’d later return with a major role in “ Yojimbo,” and after Kurosawa and Mifune fell out in the 1960s after the flop “ Red Beard,” Nakadai would go on to become the director’s go-to leading man, starring in “ Kagemusha” and “ Ran,” among others.ģ. ![]() Keep an eye out for a walk-on appearance from Tatsuya Nakadai, then only 21 and making only his second film. Some had even had or would have brushes with Hollywood: Kamatari Fujiwara, who played Shino’s father Manzo, would crop up in Arthur Penn‘s “ Mickey One” with Warren Beatty, and Sojin Kamiyama, who plays the blind minstrel, had been a silent film star in Hollywood in the 1920s, one of the few Asian actors to play Charlie Chan, and appearing in “ The Thief Of Baghdad” and “ The King of Kings” among others before the end of the silent era saw him forced to return to Japan. Keiko Tsushima, who plays his love interest Shino, was a former dancer, who’d starred in Ozu’s “ The Flavor Of Green Tea Over Rice.” Yoshio Tsuchiya (villager Rikichi) was a former doctor and would go on to write a number of books about UFOs. Isao Kimura (the youngest Samurai, Katsushiro) ran left-wing theater groups. Mifune, too, was a staple, having been discovered by the director after throwing a fit after getting in the wrong queue for a job at Toho Studios, and had starred in six prior films for the director, including “ Rashomon.” Some of the actors had curious backstories, however. Takashi Shimura, who plays leader Kambei Shimada, was a long-time favorite of Kurosawa‘s and had starred in “ Ikiru” two years earlier for the director. Some of the cast, particularly the leads, were no-brainers. ![]() Like the characters, the cast came from a diverse range of sources. ![]() As a result, they created the pretender samurai Kikuchiyo, who’s more empathetic and emotional, and cast Toshiro Mifune, who was originally going to play badass swordsman Kyuzo (later taken by Seiji Miyaguchi), in the new role, giving the actor free rein to improvise.Ģ. The 500-page first draft (co-written with regular collaborators Hideo Oguni and Shinobu Hashimoto) was titled “ Six Samurai,” but on reflection, they found that having six responsible, sober samurai heroes was a little dry. Instead, he decided to adapt a story he’d found about a group of Samurai defending a village of farmers. His original conception for the project was to follow the day in the life of a samurai, ending with the protagonist’s suicide, but he wasn’t confident enough in the level of research he’d need to do. Originally, the film was going to be called “Six Samurai”Īlthough it’s now the genre with which he’s most associated, Kurosawa had never made a samurai movie before this point. ‘Living’ Teaser: Bill Nighy Leads British Reimagining of Akira Kurosawa’s ‘Ikiru’ġ.
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