I Live in Fear

Made between Seven Samurai and Throne of Blood, this contemporary social problem movie is Kurosawa's least commercially successful work. Mifune is the ageing, patriarchal head of a Tokyo family who, terrified at the prospect of a nuclear war, decides to sell up the family business and emigrate to a farm in Brazil. With Mifune uncomfortable playing a character twice his real age, and the character himself rendered incoherent by a script which seems uncertain whether it's him or society which is insane, a volunteer court official (Shimura) - required to adjudicate in the ensuing family squabble - a little awkwardly assumes the role of moral centre. It's a problematic film, wearing its uncertainties on its sleeve; but whether shooting in long takes or cutting the footage from multiple camera shooting, Kurosawa remains the cinema's supremely humanist emotional manipulator. See it and worry.