The following interview with critic Imogen Sara Smith was recorded in 2020.

Directed by Senkichi Taniguchi • 1947 • Japan

The keepers of an inn high in the Japanese alps are unaware that their three guests are actually fugitive bank robbers. Directed by Senkichi Taniguchi.

Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1948 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura

In this powerful early noir from the great Akira Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune bursts onto the screen as a volatile, tubercular criminal who strikes up an unlikely relationship with Takashi Shimura’s jaded physician. S...

Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1949 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura

A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog w...

Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita • 1950 • Japan

A jewelry store president begins to fall for the doctor treating her husband's illness. Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita.

Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1950 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori

A riveting psychological thriller that investigates the nature of truth and the meaning of justice, RASHOMON is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made. Four people give different accou...

Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1950 • Japan

A handsome, suave Toshiro Mifune lights up the screen as painter Ichiro, whose circumstantial meeting with a famous singer (Yoshiko Yamaguchi) is twisted by the tabloid press into a torrid affair. Ichiro files a lawsuit against the seedy gossip magazine,...

Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1951 • Japan

In post-World War II Japan, childlike veteran Kinji suffers from post-traumatic stress-induced seizures, and, after treatment at a mental health institution in Okinawa, he returns to his hometown. There he meets and becomes romantically caught up with tw...

Directed by Kenji Mizoguchi • 1952 • Japan
Starring Kinuyo Tanaka, Toshiro Mifune, Masao Shimizu

A peerless chronicler of the soul who specialized in supremely emotional, visually exquisite films about the circumstances of women in Japanese society, Kenji Mizoguchi had already been directing mov...

Directed by Kazuo Mori • 1952 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura

Scripted by Akira Kurosawa and directed by period specialist Kazuo Mori, this revisionist samurai tale stars the mighty Toshiro Mifune as legendary swordsman Mataemon Araki, who aids a young man in his quest to avenge...

Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1954 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima

One of the most thrilling movie epics of all time, SEVEN SAMURAI (SHICHININ NO SAMURAI) tells the story of a sixteenth-century village whose desperate inhabitants hire the eponymous warriors to pro...

Directed by Hiroshi Inagaki • 1954 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Rentaro Mikuni, Kuroemon Onoe

In the first part of the epic Samurai Trilogy, Toshiro Mifune thunders onto the screen as the iconic title character. When we meet him, Miyamoto is a wide-eyed romantic, dreaming of military glory i...

Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1955 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Minoru Chiaki

Both the final film of this period in which Akira Kurosawa would directly wrestle with the demons of the Second World War and his most literal representation of living in an atomic age, the galvanizing I LIVE IN FEA...

Directed by Hiroshi Inagaki • 1955 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Koji Tsuruta, Kaoru Yachigusa

Toshiro Mifune furiously embodies swordsman Musashi Miyamoto as he comes into his own in the action-packed middle section of the Samurai Trilogy. DUEL AT ICHIJOJI TEMPLE furthers Miyamoto along his ...

Directed by Hiroshi Inagaki • 1956 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Koji Tsuruta, Kaoru Yachigusa

A disillusioned Musashi Miyamoto (Toshiro Mifune) has turned his back on the samurai life, becoming a farmer in a remote village, while his nemesis Kojiro (Koji Tsuruta) now works for the shogun. Ci...

Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1957 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Minoru Chiaki

A vivid, visceral “Macbeth” adaptation, THRONE OF BLOOD, directed by Akira Kurosawa, sets Shakespeare’s definitive tale of ambition and duplicity in a ghostly, fog-enshrouded landscape in feudal Japan....

Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1957 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Kyoko Kagawa

Jean Renoir and Akira Kurosawa, two of cinema’s greatest directors, transform Maxim Gorky’s classic proletariat play “The Lower Depths” in their own ways for their own times. Renoir, working amidst the ...

Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1958 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Misa Uehara, Minoru Chiaki

A grand-scale adventure as only Akira Kurosawa could make one, THE HIDDEN FORTRESS stars the inimitable Toshiro Mifune as a general charged with guarding his defeated clan’s princess (a fierce Misa Ueha...

Directed by Hiroshi Inagaki • 1958 • Japan

Matsugoro is a poor rickshaw driver whose animated spirit and optimistic demeanor make him a favorite of the town. Matsu helps an injured boy, Toshio, and is hired by the boy's parents, Kotaro and Yoshioko, to transport the boy to and from doctor appoin...

Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1960 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Masayuki Mori, Tatsuya Mihashi

A young executive hunts down his father’s killer in director Akira Kurosawa’s scathing THE BAD SLEEP WELL. Continuing his legendary collaboration with actor Toshiro Mifune, Kurosawa combines element...

Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1961 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, Yoko Tsukasa

The incomparable Toshiro Mifune stars in Akira Kurosawa’s visually stunning and darkly comic YOJIMBO. To rid a terror-stricken village of corruption, wily masterless samurai Sanjuro turns a range war...

Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1962 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, Keiju Kobayashi

Toshiro Mifune swaggers and snarls to brilliant comic effect in Akira Kurosawa’s tightly paced, beautifully composed SANJURO. In this sly companion piece to YOJIMBO, jaded samurai SANJURO helps an...

Directed by Akira Kurosawa • 1963 • Japan
Starring Toshiro Mifune, Kyoko Kagawa, Tatsuya Mihashi

Toshiro Mifune is unforgettable as Kingo Gondo, a wealthy industrialist whose family becomes the target of a cold-blooded kidnapper in HIGH AND LOW (TENGOKU TO JIGOKU), the highly influential domesti...