is a 1955 Japanese
drama film
In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. Drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super ...
directed by
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dyna ...
, produced by
Sōjirō Motoki, and co-written by Kurosawa,
Shinobu Hashimoto
Shinobu Hashimoto ( ja, 橋本 忍, ''Hashimoto Shinobu''; 18 April 1918 – 19 July 2018) was a Japanese screenwriter, film director and producer. A frequent collaborator of Akira Kurosawa, he wrote the scripts for such internationally acclaime ...
, and
Hideo Oguni
was a Japanese writer who wrote over 100 screenplays. He is best known for co-writing screenplays for a number of films directed by Akira Kurosawa, including '' Ikiru'', ''The Seven Samurai'', ''Throne of Blood'' and '' The Hidden Fortress''. ...
. The film is about an elderly Japanese factory owner so terrified of the prospect of a nuclear attack that he becomes determined to move his entire extended family to what he imagines is the safety of a farm in Brazil.
The film stars Kurosawa regulars
Toshiro Mifune
was a Japanese actor who appeared in over 150 feature films. He is best known for his 16-film collaboration (1948–1965) with Akira Kurosawa in such works as ''Rashomon'', ''Seven Samurai'', ''The Hidden Fortress'', ''Throne of Blood'', and ' ...
and
Takashi Shimura
was a Japanese actor who appeared in over 200 films between 1934 and 1981. He appeared in 21 of Akira Kurosawa's 30 films (more than any other actor), including as a lead actor in '' Drunken Angel'' (1948), ''Rashomon'' (1950), ''Ikiru'' (1952) a ...
, and is the director's last with composer
Fumio Hayasaka
Fumio Hayasaka (早坂 文雄 ''Hayasaka Fumio''; August 19, 1914 – October 15, 1955) was a Japanese composer of classical music and film scores.
Early life
Hayasaka was born in the city of Sendai on the main Japanese island of Honshū. In ...
, who died while working on it. It is in
black-and-white
Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey.
Media
The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. ...
and runs 103 minutes. The film was entered into the
1956 Cannes Film Festival.
Plot
Kiichi Nakajima (Toshiro Mifune) is an elderly
foundry
A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal into a mold, and removing the mold material after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals pr ...
owner who is convinced he and his loved ones will all be killed in an imminent
nuclear war if they stay in
Japan, so he resolves to move them to perceived safety in
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
. He does not care that no one else wants to go or that it might make things awkward that he wants to bring his three illegitimate children and two surviving mistresses along with his wife and the four children they have together, saying that nothing is more important than their continued survival.
Kiichi's three oldest children convince his wife to try to have him ruled incompetent in order to keep him from wasting their inheritance on his plan, and they bring him before a three-man arbitration panel that includes Dr. Harada (Takashi Shimura). Harada, a dentist who volunteers with the family court, sympathizes with Kiichi's concerns and points out that the fear of nuclear weapons is present in every citizen of Japan. He wonders aloud whether it may be wrong to rule someone incompetent simply for being more worried than the average citizen, but the panel eventually decides that Kiichi's irrational behavior justifies removing his ability to make the financial decisions for his family by himself.
After this, Kiichi tries to find a way to move forward with the move anyway, but his efforts fail, and his mental state begins to deteriorate more rapidly once he no longer feels as though he is doing anything to save himself and his family from the nuclear holocaust he is sure is coming. Growing increasingly desperate, he decides that his family will be willing to go with him to South America if they no longer have jobs or a source of income tying them to Japan, and he burns down the foundry. When this is discovered, his distress reaches a breaking point after some of his employees point out that his actions indicate he is unconcerned about their lives and his son-in-law argues that there are already more than enough nuclear weapons to destroy all life on this planet and nowhere is really safe.
Harada goes to visit Kiichi at the psychiatric facility to which he has been sent. While waiting to be shown to his room, Harada talks with a psychologist, who remarks that he has found Kiichi's case particularly troubling personally, since it has made him wonder whether it may be more insane to ignore the nuclear threat than it is to take it too seriously. Harada discovers that Kiichi believes he has escaped to another planet and that he has become severely withdrawn from his surroundings. During their visit, however, Kiichi becomes agitated when he sees the Sun through his window and thinks it is the Earth burning.
Cast
*
Toshiro Mifune
was a Japanese actor who appeared in over 150 feature films. He is best known for his 16-film collaboration (1948–1965) with Akira Kurosawa in such works as ''Rashomon'', ''Seven Samurai'', ''The Hidden Fortress'', ''Throne of Blood'', and ' ...
as Kiichi Nakajima
*
Takashi Shimura
was a Japanese actor who appeared in over 200 films between 1934 and 1981. He appeared in 21 of Akira Kurosawa's 30 films (more than any other actor), including as a lead actor in '' Drunken Angel'' (1948), ''Rashomon'' (1950), ''Ikiru'' (1952) a ...
as Dr. Harada
*
Minoru Chiaki
was a Japanese actor who appeared in eleven of Akira Kurosawa's films, including ''Rashomon'', ''Seven Samurai'', ''Throne of Blood'', and ''The Hidden Fortress''. He was also one of Kon Ichikawa's favorite actors.
He attended, but did not grad ...
as Jiro Nakajima, Kiichi's second-eldest son
* Eiko Miyoshi as Toyo Nakajima, Kiichi's wife
* Kyoko Aoyama as Sue Nakajima, Kiichi's youngest legitimate daughter
* Haruko Togo as Yoshi Nakajima, Kiichi's eldest daughter
*
Noriko Sengoku
, known by her stage name , was a Japanese film and television actress active primarily in the 1950s and 1960s. She made her film debut in 1947 and starred in several of Akira Kurosawa's early films such as ''Drunken Angel'' (1948), '' The Quiet ...
as Kimie Nakajima, Ichiro's wife
*
Akemi Negishi as Asako Kuribayashi, Kiichi's current mistress and the mother of a toddler who is Kiichi's son
* Hiroshi Tachikawa as Ryoichi Sayama, Kiichi's eldest illegitimate child with a former mistress of his who is now dead
* Kichijirō Ueda as Mr. Kuribayashi, Asako's father
*
Masao Shimizu
was a Japanese actor. His wife was actress Yumi Takano. His first starring role in the film was in ''Momoiro no Yuwaku'' in 1931. In 1947, he formed the Mingei Theatre Company. Shimizu often work with Akira Kurosawa. He appeared in more than 2 ...
as Takao Yamazaki, Yoshi's husband
* Yutaka Sada as Ichiro Nakajima, Kiichi's eldest son
*
Kamatari Fujiwara
was a Japanese actor.
Fujiwara worked regularly and extensively with Akira Kurosawa, and was known for both being adept at comic acting, as well as being able to take on serious roles.
Early life and career
Early life
Fujiwara was born on ...
as Okamoto
*
Ken Mitsuda
Ken Mitsuda (29 April 1902 – 28 November 1997) was a Japanese film actor. He appeared in 53 films between 1940 and 1983.
Selected filmography
* ''Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'' (Grumpy) (voice Japanese version)
* ''Lady and the Tramp'' ...
as Judge Araki
*
Eijirō Tōno
was a Japanese actor who, in a career lasting more than 50 years, appeared in over 400 television shows, nearly 250 films and numerous stage productions. He is best known in the West for his roles in films by Akira Kurosawa, such as ''Seven Samu ...
as old man from Brazil
Production
![Hayasaka fumio](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Hayasaka_Fumio.JPG)
''I Live in Fear'' was the last film that composer
Fumio Hayasaka
Fumio Hayasaka (早坂 文雄 ''Hayasaka Fumio''; August 19, 1914 – October 15, 1955) was a Japanese composer of classical music and film scores.
Early life
Hayasaka was born in the city of Sendai on the main Japanese island of Honshū. In ...
worked on before dying of tuberculosis in 1955. He had been
Akira Kurosawa
was a Japanese filmmaker and painter who directed thirty films in a career spanning over five decades. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Kurosawa displayed a bold, dyna ...
's close friend since ''
Drunken Angel
is a 1948 Japanese ''yakuza'' film directed by Akira Kurosawa. It is notable for being the first of sixteen film collaborations between director Kurosawa and actor Toshiro Mifune.
Plot
Sanada (Takashi Shimura) is an alcoholic doctor (the tit ...
'' in 1948 and collaborated with him on several films. The composer and director collaborated to test "oppositional handling of music and performance" and, in ''
Something Like an Autobiography'', Kurosawa would say that working with Hayasaka changed his views on how film music should be used; from then on, he viewed music as "counterpoint" to the image and not just an accompaniment. Kurosawa recalled that it was a conversation with Hayasaka about nuclear weapons in the wake of the
H-bomb test accident of 1954 that inspired the plot of ''I Live in Fear''.
Masaru Sato
(sometimes transliterated Satoh) was a Japanese composer of film scores. Following the 1955 death of Fumio Hayasaka, whom Sato studied under, Sato was the composer of Akira Kurosawa's films for the next 10 years. He was nominated for Best Music a ...
, Hayasaka's pupil, wrote that he completed the film's score.
Reissues
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home video, home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scho ...
has released ''I Live in Fear'' on DVD in North America as part of two Kurosawa-centered box sets; 2008's ''Postwar Kurosawa'', the seventh entry in their
Eclipse series, and 2009's ''AK 100: 25 Films by Akira Kurosawa''.
References
External links
''I Live in Fear''at
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
*
*
I Live in Fear' at the
Japanese Movie Database
The , more commonly known as simply JMDb, is an online database of information about Japanese movies, actors, and production crew personnel. It is similar to the Internet Movie Database but lists only those films initially released in Japan. Y. ...
*
{{Authority control
1955 films
1955 drama films
Japanese drama films
Japanese black-and-white films
1950s Japanese-language films
Films about nuclear war and weapons
Films directed by Akira Kurosawa
Films with screenplays by Shinobu Hashimoto
Films with screenplays by Akira Kurosawa
Films with screenplays by Hideo Oguni
Films scored by Fumio Hayasaka
Films scored by Masaru Sato
Films produced by Sōjirō Motoki
Toho films
1950s Japanese films