Red Beard (Kurosawa) 1965 BFI Blu Ray
Over many years I have watched Red Beard three times and each time I felt elated and drained by its power. Yet since 1965, though critical and public reaction to Red Beard is overall positive, two annoying descriptions are hung round its neck: “soap opera” is pitted, as if to ward off sentimentality, with “humanist.” Both terms can be used to damn a work of art. Though because it’s the grand master Kurosawa he’s not damned but rebuked. Red Beard is rightly praised as a moving and intimate epic about the search for goodness in a world disposed more often towards cruelty. In a three hour film, plus intermission, Kurosawa convinces you that this difficult quest for the good was worth undertaking and that cynicism is rightly banished.
Yet to be “humanist” runs the risk of being just worthy, dull and prescriptive. Whilst “soap opera” threatens diluted melodrama bursting with displays of exaggerated emotion. Red Beard has neither. It’s suffused with a deep feeling for human suffering: nearly every scene is shot with an exact artistic detachment to combat and alleviate the suffering it reveals. This results in a moral, but never preachy, education where direct human kindness becomes a radical and liberating act. Red Beard is not quite, but nearly, a masterpiece. But that’s unimportant. For it’s a really wise film. Sometimes a wonderful film, embedded with humility and insight, doesn’t have to be great and therefore cinematically perfect.
It’s the Tokugawa period (early or mid 19th century Japan) and Yasumoto (Yuzo Kayama) is a trainee doctor who comes to work in a hospital for the poor in Edo. Yasumoto has learnt Dutch medical ideas at a school in Nagasaki and wants to be the personal physician of a rich Shogunate. He is disdainful about having to work with the poverty stricken of the hospital. The clinic is run by Red Beard (Dr. Kyojo Niide played with fine and commanding restraint by Toshiro Mifune) who’s a gruff, sometimes impetuous but deeply compassionate man.
When Niide saves Yasumoto from being killed by “The Mantis” (A traumatised female patient) it plants the first seed of doubt as to how he views his future medical career. A series of episodes with an elderly cancer-ravaged patient; a dying man revered by the other patients for his unstinting kindness and the rescue of Otoyo, a twelve year old girl, from a brothel, eventually cause Yasumoto to change his mind. He chooses public duty at the hospital over a comfortable private practice.
Red Beard justifies its three-hour running time because of Kurosawa’s thoughtful and compassionate direction and editing. It’s a reflective story about the process of gaining emotional intelligence and establishing trust and respect between a master doctor and his pupil. Many long-held takes, and a brilliant attention to detail, prove to be mesmerising. The ‘violence’ of an operation on a young woman; the death rattles of the cancer patient; the OCD behaviour of Otoyo who constantly cleans the floor and the pathos of the superbly integrated past histories of characters is outstanding. This is film craftsmanship and social observation of a high order.
When Yasumoto falls ill another colleague questions Niide about what happened. Instead of explaining it was because of general stress and physical exhaustion Niide says that Yasumoto just witnessed too much of the world in one go and this enabled his growing up. This process of healing / revelation continues as Niide asks Otoyo to nurse Yasumoto back to health. There is a remarkably affecting sequence of Otoyo doing very small things to help Yasumoto recover from his illness. For these acts of kindness and love for the doctor Kurosawa creates a beautiful rhythm between image and sound. Each of Otoyo’s minimal actions, like giving him a drink of water or applying a wet cloth to Yasumoto’s brow, are accompanied by an inspired use of music.
Masaru Sato, the film’s composer, was asked to create a Japanese orchestral accompaniment drawn from Haydn – a reworking of the second movement of the “Surprise” symphony. Small physical acts of touching become the pulse of self-healing, nursing and understanding (only fully assimilated by Otoyo at a later date) these perfectly chime with the musical pulse of Sato / Haydn. The surprise of the music is the subtle revelation that things can slowly change from darkness back to light. It is a beautiful moment and one of the greatest sequences in all of Kurosawa’s work.
So what holds me back from saying Red Beard isn’t as great a film as Living (with which it has much in common), Seven Samurai or Throne of Blood? Earlier I mentioned melodramatic excess. Without any exaggerations to make for implausible drama Kurosawa does direct the patients’ responses to the deaths of others to appear strained, they look awkwardly sympathetic to the point of naïve awe. But more annoyingly there’s the moment where Otoyo is trying to persuade a young boy named Chobu to stop stealing food from the clinic. They are watched and overheard by a doctor and woman who works in the kitchen. The scene comes across as set up and didactic: overdone Brechtian in its aim to spell out a moral lesson. Blemishes such as these are for me unfortunately magnified at each viewing.
Yet putting my reservations to one side Red Beard is still essential viewing. There isn’t a period hospital film quite like it. Superbly acted, written, directed and photographed it holds you in its lovingly tight grip from beginning to end.
Alan Price © 2026.
Red Beard (Kurosawa) 1965 BFI Blu Ray
Over many years I have watched Red Beard three times and each time I felt elated and drained by its power. Yet since 1965, though critical and public reaction to Red Beard is overall positive, two annoying descriptions are hung round its neck: “soap opera” is pitted, as if to ward off sentimentality, with “humanist.” Both terms can be used to damn a work of art. Though because it’s the grand master Kurosawa he’s not damned but rebuked. Red Beard is rightly praised as a moving and intimate epic about the search for goodness in a world disposed more often towards cruelty. In a three hour film, plus intermission, Kurosawa convinces you that this difficult quest for the good was worth undertaking and that cynicism is rightly banished.
Yet to be “humanist” runs the risk of being just worthy, dull and prescriptive. Whilst “soap opera” threatens diluted melodrama bursting with displays of exaggerated emotion. Red Beard has neither. It’s suffused with a deep feeling for human suffering: nearly every scene is shot with an exact artistic detachment to combat and alleviate the suffering it reveals. This results in a moral, but never preachy, education where direct human kindness becomes a radical and liberating act. Red Beard is not quite, but nearly, a masterpiece. But that’s unimportant. For it’s a really wise film. Sometimes a wonderful film, embedded with humility and insight, doesn’t have to be great and therefore cinematically perfect.
It’s the Tokugawa period (early or mid 19th century Japan) and Yasumoto (Yuzo Kayama) is a trainee doctor who comes to work in a hospital for the poor in Edo. Yasumoto has learnt Dutch medical ideas at a school in Nagasaki and wants to be the personal physician of a rich Shogunate. He is disdainful about having to work with the poverty stricken of the hospital. The clinic is run by Red Beard (Dr. Kyojo Niide played with fine and commanding restraint by Toshiro Mifune) who’s a gruff, sometimes impetuous but deeply compassionate man.
When Niide saves Yasumoto from being killed by “The Mantis” (A traumatised female patient) it plants the first seed of doubt as to how he views his future medical career. A series of episodes with an elderly cancer-ravaged patient; a dying man revered by the other patients for his unstinting kindness and the rescue of Otoyo, a twelve year old girl, from a brothel, eventually cause Yasumoto to change his mind. He chooses public duty at the hospital over a comfortable private practice.
Red Beard justifies its three-hour running time because of Kurosawa’s thoughtful and compassionate direction and editing. It’s a reflective story about the process of gaining emotional intelligence and establishing trust and respect between a master doctor and his pupil. Many long-held takes, and a brilliant attention to detail, prove to be mesmerising. The ‘violence’ of an operation on a young woman; the death rattles of the cancer patient; the OCD behaviour of Otoyo who constantly cleans the floor and the pathos of the superbly integrated past histories of characters is outstanding. This is film craftsmanship and social observation of a high order.
When Yasumoto falls ill another colleague questions Niide about what happened. Instead of explaining it was because of general stress and physical exhaustion Niide says that Yasumoto just witnessed too much of the world in one go and this enabled his growing up. This process of healing / revelation continues as Niide asks Otoyo to nurse Yasumoto back to health. There is a remarkably affecting sequence of Otoyo doing very small things to help Yasumoto recover from his illness. For these acts of kindness and love for the doctor Kurosawa creates a beautiful rhythm between image and sound. Each of Otoyo’s minimal actions, like giving him a drink of water or applying a wet cloth to Yasumoto’s brow, are accompanied by an inspired use of music.
Masaru Sato, the film’s composer, was asked to create a Japanese orchestral accompaniment drawn from Haydn – a reworking of the second movement of the “Surprise” symphony. Small physical acts of touching become the pulse of self-healing, nursing and understanding (only fully assimilated by Otoyo at a later date) these perfectly chime with the musical pulse of Sato / Haydn. The surprise of the music is the subtle revelation that things can slowly change from darkness back to light. It is a beautiful moment and one of the greatest sequences in all of Kurosawa’s work.
So what holds me back from saying Red Beard isn’t as great a film as Living (with which it has much in common), Seven Samurai or Throne of Blood? Earlier I mentioned melodramatic excess. Without any exaggerations to make for implausible drama Kurosawa does direct the patients’ responses to the deaths of others to appear strained, they look awkwardly sympathetic to the point of naïve awe. But more annoyingly there’s the moment where Otoyo is trying to persuade a young boy named Chobu to stop stealing food from the clinic. They are watched and overheard by a doctor and woman who works in the kitchen. The scene comes across as set up and didactic: overdone Brechtian in its aim to spell out a moral lesson. Blemishes such as these are for me unfortunately magnified at each viewing.
Yet putting my reservations to one side Red Beard is still essential viewing. There isn’t a period hospital film quite like it. Superbly acted, written, directed and photographed it holds you in its lovingly tight grip from beginning to end.
Alan Price © 2026.
By Alan Price • added recently on London Grip, film • Tags: Alan Price, film