Red Beard - A Japanese Film By Akiro Kurosawa

When Akira Kurosawa conceptualized Red Beard, he did not realize he was creating one of the greatest Japanese role models. This film shows just why Kurosawa is considered amongst the greatest.

The Hyderabad Film Club, as part of the ongoing retrospective on Japanese Director Akira Kurosawa from 14th to 18th October, is screening Red Beard, on 14th October, at the Sarathi Studios.

In 1820, young Noboru Yasumoto (Yuzo Kayama) completes his medical education in Nagasaki and returns to his native Edo, hoping both to marry the daughter of a wealthy man, and to achieve affluence himself through his medical practice.

He happens to visit the famed Koishikawa clinic for the indigent, which is run by the autocratic Dr Kyojo Niide (Toshiro Mifune), better known as Red Beard. To his intense displeasure, he soon finds himself assigned to the clinic for his internship.

At first, the young intern is arrogant and rebellious, intent on displaying his knowledge of medical innovations and contemptuous of the older doctor for spending his life among the poor. But as time passes, he gains an intimate knowledge of the kind of suffering that is endemic to the impoverished, and, at length, becomes an acolyte of this seemingly dictatorial physician, who heals his patients with gentleness and humility as much as with his medical skill.

With Akira Kurosawa