The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

The careers of Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune were so intertwined -- each did much of his very best work with the other -- that it is hardly possible to think of one without the other. It was entirely fitting that a dual bio be attempted, and Galbraith is to be applauded for taking on the job and making good work of it.

Though _The Emperor and the Wolf_ looks intimidatingly thick, only 650 of its 825 pages are actual narrative (the rest is taken up by an impressively detailed filmography of the two principals which scholars will love, and extensive notes and index), and that narrative reads easily and fairly swiftly.

The emphasis is clearly on the FILMS rather than the lives of these extraordinary artists. Galbraith moves calmly over such developments as Kurosawa's 1971 suicide attempt and Mifune's mistress Mika Kitagawa. He doesn't avoid, but he doesn't dwell, either.

On the other hand, assuming the Western reader's basic ignorance of such matters (and rightly so), he takes care to summarize the work of other directors, writers, and actors whenever they crossed paths with our two heroes. Descriptions of even really bad and forgettable films that have never made it to the U.S. sometimes make one yearn to see them, never mind the many decent ones.

There are plenty of quotes from American film reviewers -- good, bad, and ugly. (I was surprised that among my favorites, Stanley Kauffmann missed the boat a few times, and John Simon utterly dismissed "Ran.") Kevin Thomas of the LA Times seems to have done the best, most consistent job of grasping what these two geniuses were doing, each time a new film came out.

Galbraith gets overly defensive about Kurosawa's final two projects, "Rhapsody in August" and "Madadayo," but is harsh with "Dreams" and doesn't hesitate to disagree with famed Japan and Japanese film expert Donald Richie on some judgments, or to point out where other commentators have missed the boat (such as in the role William Holden played in championing Japanese films -- in particular, Inagaki's "Samurai" -- in the United States).

He's not a great prose stylist -- he regularly treats "none" and "each" as plural nouns, as in "none ... have been," "each ... have been" -- and I scratched my head over the conclusion "as lightweight films go, it is something of a masterpiece" (of "Sanjuro," p. 331), as well as the meaningless "infinitely more transcendent" (p. 558).

The book includes 44 b&w photos. Most are merely okay (perhaps Richie got most of the great ones for his books), although the one of Mifune in full costume driving off the set of "Yojimbo" in his MG is priceless.

One comes away from this largely reverent book with increased respect for both its subjects (yes, that is possible!), particularly the actor, about whose modesty and professionalism there are endless testimonials.

Even as a world famous star and head of his own production studio in his 40s, Mifune would clean bathrooms and ashtrays, spray the sidewalk, fetch chairs for others. He always knew his lines, and was unfailingly kind to new, young actors. Because he acted as his own agent, he rarely received top dollar for his work, which usually meant greater gate receipts for even truly bad films after the mid 1950s.

I snapped this book up as soon as I ran across it, just over a week ago, and I'm glad I did.

I think many reviewers didn't read the subtitle of the book, "Lives and Films of....." I don't think this book was meant to be a complete kiss and tell biography of Kurosawa and Mifune, this is a book which chronicled their cooperative efforts together in making films that became great classics and their relationship with and against each other. This is a book on relationship between two giants of the Japanese film industry. It was not meant to be a total biography as so many reviewers seem to have wanted.

The book gives very good background material to both men but its always about the relationship between the two. After both men split up after Red Beard, the author took pains to how see each one of them dealt with their careers afterward. Kurosawa continued to have success while Mifune drifted into period films, TV shows and his achievements suffered greatly. The book also gives a great understanding on how Japanese film industry worked, how it declined and basically how it fell apart in the face of Hollywood. Even the author expressed mixed surprised how waves of American films in a foreign nation like Japan, completely converted the Japanese audience into their own as they abandoned their own film industries into Third World status.

I thought the book was well written, well researched and explained the relationship and the films made by both Kurosawa and Mifune. But for anyone looking for a true biography, look some place else, for film historians like myself, this book is a must read.

This book suffers from two major failings: 1) it is completely lacking in focus 2) the author is too timid to set his own stamp on the material.

The title suggests it's about the films that director Akira Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune made together, including a well-known string of masterpieces (Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, etc.); in fact it details, chronologically and in parallel, the life and films of Kurosawa and those of Mifune. As the work they did together was only part of each man's career, the result is a lot of jumping around from one to the other, with lots of description but almost no analysis. In particular the author gives only the most minimal interpretation of the relationship between the two, either on screen or off, its obvious importance in making their masterpieces possible, or why it abruptly ended, apparently devastating the careers of both. Instead we get this happened then that happened, quotes of variable interest from people who knew one or the other, and plot summaries of every film that either Kurosawa or Mifune had anything to do with in any capacity.

Kurosawa manages to come through all this with his dignity and status as one of the greatest-ever directors more or less intact. After the break with Mifune he remained true to his talent and overcame severe financial and personal difficulties to make films such as the grand-but-dry Ran and the subtly profound Madadayo. Mifune's standing is however sadly undermined by the author's approach. His extraordinary work with Kurosawa disappears in a wealth of detail about all the other hundred or so films he appeared in and/or produced - almost all of which it would be kinder to forget - punctuated by accounts of his messy and rather pathetic private life and many business failures. The man who played Kikuchiyo in Seven Samurai - for example - deserves better than this.

The saddest thing is that Galbraith obviously wanted to write a really good book, but has mistaken quantity for quantity. For example, with all this material he could have written an interesting biography of Mifune, exploring the question of how it was that a man so apparently lacking in good sense and confidence managed to turn out performances oozing both that rank among the finest in world cinema. Or he might have written a book that really did concentrate on the films Mifune and Kurosawa made together, shedding greater light on their relationship, its creative force and its rise and fall. As for the thousands of plot summaries of lost films that Galbraith feels are so important, they could have gone to an archive to moulder harmlessly.

However to write these or other books of his choosing Galbraith would have had to put aside his disabling respect for his subjects, which makes him avoid passing any kind of judgment or opting for any particular interpretation, prefering instead just to dump undigested on the page as many versions of `what happened' as he has been able to find. (Ironically this fault resembles Kurosawa's hands-off approach to Dostoyevsky in his film of The Idiot, whose disastrous results Galbraith notes.)

Ultimately I blame the editor at Faber. On receiving the manuscript this person should first have read it and then sent it back with a covering letter saying, `great research, now write me two or three great books.' In failing to do either they did a great disservice to Galbraith and his readers - not to mention Kurosawa and Mifune.