SUBJECTS

Family life -- Japan -- Drama, Fear -- Drama, Nuclear weapons testing -- Psychological aspects -- Japan -- Drama

I Live in Fear

(Ikimono no koroku)
(Record of a Living Being)

featuring

Toshiro Mifune, Eiko Miyoshi, Haruko Togo, Masao Shimizu,

Made shortly after the first H-bomb tests in the Pacific caused renewed fear in Japan of nuclear war, this film has only grown in relevance. It also remains a remarkable testament to the versatility and daring of Mifune, who at the age of thirty-five took on the role of a crusty, eccentric old patriarch, Nakajima, who attempts to sell his small foundry and move to Brazil, out of range of the nuclear holocaust he envisions as imminent. Like King Lear, he watches, outraged, as members of his large family seek to protect their financial interests by having him declared insane. Mifune’s performance is so transformative that “even hardened film buffs fail to recognize him” (Film Forum).

FILM DETAILS 
Screenwriter
  • Akira Kurosawa
  • Shinobu Hashimoto
  • Hideo Oguni
Cinematographer
  • Asakazu Nakai
Language
  • Japanese
  • with English subtitles
Print Info
  • B&W
  • 35mm
  • 100 mins
Source
  • Janus Films
CINEFILES

CineFiles is an online database of BAMPFA's extensive collection of documentation covering world cinema, past and present.

View I Live in Fear documents  

Kurosawa & Mifune (program note), Film Forum (New York), 2002

Kurosawa and Mifune (program note), Cinematheque Ontario/a division of Toronto International Film Festival Group, James Quandt, 2002

The films of Akira Kurosawa (press release), Pacific Film Archive, 1974

Ikimono no kiroku (review), Variety, Vincent Canby, 1968

Kurosawa on Kurosawa (article), Sight and Sound, Akira Kurosawa

The films of Akira Kurosawa (program), TLA Cinema

Kurosawa's Kumonosu-djo (distributor materials), Toho Kabushiki Kaisha

Kurosawa: a retrospective (program), Japan Society, David Owens

Displaying 8 of 8 publicly available documents.


View all I Live in Fear documentation on CineFiles.