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Release Date: 1965

Cast: Akemi Negishi, Kamatari Fujiwara, Tatsuyoshi Ehara, Yoshio Tsuchiya, Yūzō Kayama, Reiko Dan, Terumi Niki, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Toshiro Mifune

Categories: Movies, Medical Fiction, Period Piece, Black-And-White, World Cinema, Art Film, Drama Film

Red Beard (赤ひげ, Akahige) is a 1965 Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa about the relationship between a town doctor and his new trainee. The film was based on Shūgorō Yamamoto's short story collection, Akahige shinryotan (赤ひげ診療譚). Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Insulted and the Injured provided the source for a subplot about a young girl, Otoyo (Terumi Niki), who is rescued from a brothel. Red Beard looks at the problem of social injustice and explores two of Kurosawa's favourite topics: humanism and existentialism. The film takes place in Koishikawa, a district of... MORE

Red Beard (赤ひげ, Akahige) is a 1965 Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa about the relationship between a town doctor and his new trainee. The film was based on Shūgorō Yamamoto's short story collection, Akahige shinryotan (赤ひげ診療譚). Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Insulted and the Injured provided the source for a subplot about a young girl, Otoyo (Terumi Niki), who is rescued from a brothel. Red Beard looks at the problem of social injustice and explores two of Kurosawa's favourite topics: humanism and existentialism. The film takes place in Koishikawa, a district of Edo (the former name of the city of Tokyo), in the 19th century. Young Dr. Noboru Yasumoto (Yūzō Kayama) is the film's protagonist. Trained in a Dutch medical school in Nagasaki, the arrogant Yasumoto aspires to the status of personal physician of the Shogunate, a position currently held by a close relative; his father is already a well-established, highly competent physician. Yasumoto believes that he should progress through the safe, and well-protected, army structure of medical education. However, for Yasumoto's post-graduate medical training, he has been assigned to a rural clinic under the guidance of Akahige LESS