Red Beard
is a 1965 Japanese jidaigeki film co-written, edited, and directed by Akira Kurosawa, in his last collaboration with actor Toshiro Mifune. Based on Shūgorō Yamamoto's 1959 short story collection, Akahige Shinryōtan, the film takes place in Koishikawa, a district of Edo, towards the end of the Tokugawa period (i.e. early or mid-19th century), and is about the relationship between a town doctor and his new trainee. Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel Humiliated and Insulted provided the source for a subplot about a young girl, Otoyo (Terumi Niki), who is rescued from a brothel.
Plot
The young and arrogant doctor Noboru Yasumoto, trained in a Dutch medical school in Nagasaki, aspires to the status of personal physician of the Shogunate, a position currently held by a close relative, and expects to progress through the privileged and insulated army structure of medical education. However, for Yasumoto's post-graduate medical training, he is assigned to a rural clinic under the guidance of Dr. Kyojō Niide, known as Akahige ("Red Beard"). Beneath a gruff exterior, Dr. Niide is a compassionate and wise clinic director.
More details
| author | Akira Kurosawa Hideo Oguni Masato Ide Ryūzō Kikushima |
|---|---|
| contentLocation | Edo Koishikawa Yōjōsho |
| director | Akira Kurosawa |
| editor | Akira Kurosawa |
| events | health care physician |
| genre | drama |
| keywords | dying man fight gang of thugs heal hug medical education medical school nagasaki new love pass shogunate stealing food suffer train turn wed |
| musicBy | Masaru Sato |
| producer | Tomoyuki Tanaka |
| productionCompany | Kurosawa Productions |
| publisher | Toho |
| recordedAt | Japan |
| theme | japanese jidaigeki |