Speedy samurai

Talking with the late Toshiro Mifune

Can any movie-star interview improve on that day a dozen years ago at the Montreal Film Festival? That's when I sat down in a hotel room with Japan's extraordinary Toshiro Mifune, who had had a mighty screen career of 15 leads in films by director Akira Kurosawa, including Yojimbo, The Seven Samurai, and Rashomon (which is showing in a new 35mm print this weekend, January 23 and 24, at the Brattle).

Mifune died several weeks ago, at age 77. It's hard to fathom him stilled. Think of his triple-time samurais on the run, his hyperkinetic swordplay, his screen voice -- an inimitable tommy-gun spray of phlegm and gravel. "It was, above all, the speed with which he expressed himself that was astounding," Kurosawa said. "The ordinary Japanese actor might need 10 feet of film to get across an impression. Mifune needed only three feet."

Talking about his old movies at Montreal, he became as excited as a hyperactive juvenile, racing around the hotel room to punctuate his anecdotes, breaking into imaginary swordfights and samurai battles, and in general tiring out his poor Japanese-to-English translator.

Except for his twinkle-eyed humor, Mifune at 65 matched the untrained wild boy who misbehaved at an actors' open audition in 1946 at Toho Studios, freaking the judges with his stream of profanities. Just as Mifune was being thrown out, Kurosawa walked in. The filmmaker recalled in his 1982 Something like an Autobiography, "A young man was reeling around the room in a violent frenzy. It was as frightening as watching a wounded beast trying to break loose. . . . I found this young man strangely attractive."

I asked Mifune whether he remembered that occasion? He answered by grabbing a straightback chair and re-enacting how at 26 he sat gruffly before his Soho judges. "One judge said, 'Get angry.' I answered, 'Why should I get angry?' Another judge asked me to laugh. I said, 'Why should I laugh? Nothing is funny.' "

And so on, until Kurosawa saved the day by lobbying to give Mifune a contract. The raw actor, trained as a military photographer, played violent bank robbers and a gangster boss in films by other directors and, in 1948, a memorable racketeer in Kurosawa's Drunken Angel. It was in 1951 that both Kurosawa and Mifune became internationally recognized, when Rashomon won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

In 1952 Mifune went to act in The Life of Oharu for another master of cinema, Kenji Mizoguchi (Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff). "Mizoguchi was a stickler for props," Mifune remembered. "If an object were used in his movie for tea time, he might look at it and say, 'This is a reproduction!' He would close down the set and order the original from Kyoto."

With a nudge from me, Mifune improvised a once-in-a-lifetime Mizoguchi imitation! He lowered his eyeglasses to pinch his nose and squatted to examine an imaginary prop. Then he mumbled and grumbled in Japanese, "This prop isn't right!"

Mifune straightened up. "Mizoguchi was an artist, a professional," he said with respect.

Did he and Kurosawa ever quarrel?

Yes, on the 1961 samurai film Yojimbo.

"One day, Kurosawa 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 Kurosawa arrived, I would be there already, in costume and make-up from 6 a.m."

It was obvious that Mifune still smarted from that insult to his dignity of a quarter-century earlier. He added, "No matter how much I drank the night before, I never once was late on his films. But with Kurosawa, 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.' "

As Mifune lit a cigarette from his dandy cigarette case, I got him to autograph two pictures of himself as a swaggering samurai. My final question was a banal one: "What's the source of your indefatigable energy?'

Mifune chortled. "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!"

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Another recent and very tragic film death: Juzo Itami, 64, Japanese filmmaker of the greatest food film of them all, Tampopo (1986), as well as The Funeral (1984), A Taxing Woman (1987), and A Taxing Woman's Return (1988), the latter two starring his funny haircut-with-bangs, ditzy-comedy wife, Nobuko Miyamoto. According to the AP, he committed suicide just ahead of the publication of a magazine story that was claiming he had an extra-marital affair. Itami's final humbling note: "Only through my death can I prove my innocence."

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Parents always put the squeeze on rep moviehouses to show classic films for their children -- and then neglect to show up. Turn off your babysitting VCRs, moms and pops, and support the Coolidge Corner's fine Saturday and Sunday 11 a.m. kids screenings on the big, big screen. January 23 and 24, it's Charlotte's Web animated. January 31 and February 1, it's the great Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Call 734-9507 for titles into March.