Diana_Faye
Most Samurai movies are tragically inaccurate and were produced during war times to persuade the people of Japan into the "Samurai way of thinking": death before losses. The officers actually ordered their pilots to sacrifice themselves by flying into enemy ships to destroy them. I'd also like to point out that the original samurai did not have any Kendo training and merely hacked and slashed in battle, and honour had very little to do with anything.
The
Seven Samurai was made after WWII (1954). Here's the IMDB link:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047478/In
The Seven Samurai, he played Kikuchiyo, the somewhat goofy son of a farmer and want-to-be samurai who acts as both the comic relief and a voice of sorts for the farmers. One of the most memorable lines in the movie is Kikuchiyo's speech about class.
Mifune played Tajomaru, the bandit.
Rashomon which was based off of a short story by Ryunosuke Akutagawa called "In a Grove."
He played Chow (Macbeth) in T
he Throne of Blood, Kurowawa's adaptation of
Macbeth.
In both
Yojimbo and it's companion piece/sequel
Sanjuro, Mifune played Sanjuro Kuwabatake a traveling ronin who uses his wits and skill to survive. The story of
Yojimbo was later adapted into the spaghetti western film
A Fistful of Dollars. Sanjuro the character has been adapted many times over and can be recognized as the "strong silent hero" of countless westerns and action movies.
In the movie
The Hidden Fortress Mifune played the general of an overthrown empire trying to bring the princess of his former empire to the boarder safely.
In
Stray Dog Mifune is a detective in Tokyo during the 1950s. When his gun is stolen on a bus in the city, he goes on a mad search to find the thief, and then to recover his weapon.
Those are all the movies I've seen with Mifune in them. Toshiro Mifune does have an amazing acting range. He's played sort of goofy comic characers (who apparantly have more to them), a tense but highly competent general under stress, a calm, collected, charismatic sword-for-higher, a half-mad, cowardly bandit and rapist, and a detective.
Mifune worked closely with the director Akira Kurosawa until after the release of the film
Red Beard. It took two years to film
Red Beard, and during those two years Mifune had to keep a beard. Because of this he was unable to find acting jobs elsewhere. That (as far as I know) is the reason Mifune stopped working with Kurosawa.
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