Stray Dog / Nora inu
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
Japan, 1949, 122 min, b&w
March 23, 2010 will mark the 100th anniversary of Akira Kurosawa's birth. One of the many ways in which it is being celebrated is a centennial retrospective of many of his films at the Film Forum in New York.
Stray Dog will be the first film shown in the retrospective and it will run for nine days from January 6 - 14, 2010, with four shows daily. Toshiro Mifune (right in the photo above) stars as Murakami, a detective whose gun is stolen from him on a crowded bus. Takashi Shimura (left in the photo) is Detective Sato, his superior. Murakami is obsessed with recovering the weapon after it is used in a crime.
The film has a "there but for forture" theme as it smartly compares Detective Murakami and the criminal, both of whom were veterans of the war Japan had recently lost, but who had taken different paths in its aftermath. There's some fantastic hidden camera work taken in the black market streets of Tokyo.
For further info or to buy tickets online, click here.
And for those of you who, for one reason or another, can't make it to one of these screenings, there's a Criterion DVD of the film available that is outstanding, as one would expect.
Dr. Glick:
ReplyDeleteIt's a pleasure reading your site and your brief review of Stray Dog.
I would be interested to know if you would help me in a project I and others are working on. The site Wikipedia.com every day has a featured article on its homepage that is read by many thousands of people. On March 23, 2010, the 100th birthday of Akira Kurosawa, I would like the biographical article on Kurosawa to be the featured article on Wikipedia's homepage. I believe that his achievements deserve nothing less. Would you and/or other Asian film experts you know be willing to help with this?
Regards,
Dylanexpert
(David Baldwin, NYC)