Sengoku burai (AKA Sword for Hire AKA 戦国無頼) (1952) (English Subtitles)

Directed by Inagaki Hiroshi (稲垣浩)
Written by Hiroshi Inagaki and Kurosawa Akira (黒澤明)
Story by Inoue Yasushi (井上靖)
Cinematography by Īmura Tadashi (飯村正)
Music by Dan Ikuma (團伊玖磨)

Starring:
Mifune Toshirō (三船敏郎), Mikuni Rentarō (三国連太郎), Ichikawa Danshirō (市川段四郎), Shirley Yamaguchi/Yamaguchi Yoshiko/Li Hsiang-lan (山口淑子/李香蘭), Asaji Shinobu (浅茅しのぶ), Shimura Takashi (志村喬), Tōno Eijirō (東野英治郎), Kagawa Ryōsuke (香川良介), Aoyama Sugisaku (青山杉作), Miyoshi Eiko (三好栄子), Kōdō Kokuten (高堂国典), Kosugi Yoshio (小杉義男), Ueda Kichijirō (上田吉二郎), Tabu Kenzō (田武謙三), Tani Akira (谷晃), Komiya Kazuaki (小宮一晃), Sugi Kan (杉寛), Horiuchi Eizaburō (堀内永三郎), Nagahama Fujio (長浜藤夫), Hirose Yoshiko (広瀬嘉子), Kitagawa Machiko (北川好子)

Synopsis:
Soldiers Hayate and Yaheiji secretly escape from their besieged castle. Hayate has left behind his lover, Kano. On his way, Hayate is wounded and cared for by Oryo, who falls in love with him. But when Hayate accidentally kills her caretaker, he flees, with Oryo in pursuit. Subsequently, Hayate’s comrade Yaheiji falls in love with Oryo. Kano, the lover left behind by Hayate, believes him dead, and becomes involved with another soldier, Jurota. When Jurota defects to the opposing army, he takes Kano with him. A double set of love triangles has developed, wherein each man and each woman loves one and is loved by another. Finally only combat and self-sacrifice can untangle the weave.

Shortened review by Japanonfilm:
Based on a 1951 novel, it is another step in Inagaki’s revival of the jidai-geki. The result is a grand romantic spectacle that reminds us that the modern samurai movie did not begin with Kurosawa. The only available DVD at present is missing a full 30 minutes, and is made from a print that is considerably faded, with both darks and lights grayed down so that in some scenes it is not always possible to distinguish faces, much less details of the settings.

Set in the civil wars of the 1570s, the film follows three samurai, Hayate, Jurata, and Yakeiji after the fall of their castle. Jurata escapes by pretending to be Hayate and escorting Hayate’s love Kano to safety, while the other two survive the fighting despite their wounds. Yakeiji becomes the leader of a bandit group while Hayate is saved by Oryo, the daughter of the leader of a different set of bandits. Jurata falls in love with Kano, but she leaves him to search for Hayate, just missing him several times, and Oryo also falls in love with Hayate and tries to track him down after she believes he killed her father. While an outsider may not always follow the historical references, it is always easy to follow where the principals are (usually on the losing side), even in the compressed version available.

As can be expected in any historical epic, we are given castles under siege, battles on land and on sea (technically Lake Biwa), rescues, escapes, suicides, and a large cast of extras, rather in the mode of pre-Cinemascope de Mille, but without the religiosity used to justify the thrills and titillation and without noticeable special effects. Aside from the budgetary opulence for its date, it is very unusual for Japanese epics of almost any period in its attention given to the women. In most jidai-geki through the 70s, the hero’s love is little more than an appendage, and the need for her to be the perfect Japanese dream woman further limits interest for us.

No matter how well played, she is Melanie, not Scarlett O’Hara, waiting patiently, following after, living in hope. While we have exactly such a woman here in Kano, we also have something different, a bandit woman Oryo with real complexity who insists on becoming a principal, not a sidelight, in the drama.

Hayate is played by Toshiro Mifune, and I don’t think he has ever looked more handsome and more like a traditional movie star. The more cowardly Jurata is Rentaro Mikuni, with that odd combination of confused weakness and attractiveness that marked so many of his later roles, while Yakeiji is the Kabuki actor Danshiro Ichikawa III, who made only a handful of movies. But rather surprisingly, since Inagaki’s movies were never known for the complexity or size of their women’s roles, the real attention-grabber is Shirley Yamaguchi as Oryo, who bites into the flamboyant bandit maiden like she was channeling a young Bette Davis. I can’t think of a similarly intense and emotionally varied female character in earlier Japanese movies except perhaps Setsuko Hara in No Regrets for Our Youth or the parts of The Love of Sumako in which Mizoguchi deigns to let us actually see Kinuyo Tanaka, both modern women in modern-era movies, nor anything similar in later movies until Onibaba and Irezumi.

Even with the print problems, I think almost anyone who enjoys a good night at the movies will find this a great discovery. When joined with Kojiro Sasaki, especially with real restorations of the photography, we could begin to really understand Inagaki’s work and reputation in a far different light.