Product Details

• Actors: Toshirô Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki, Eiko Miyoshi, Kyôko Aoyama
• Directors: Akira Kurosawa
• Writers: Akira Kurosawa, Fumio Hayasaka, Hideo Oguni, Shinobu Hashimoto
• Producers: Sôjirô Motoki
• Format: Black & White, Original recording remastered, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Homevision
• VHS Release Date: September 21, 2001
• Run Time: 103 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0780023463
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #25,779 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #40 in	Video > Art House & International > Asian Cinema > Japan > Classics
  #45 in	Video > Art House & International > Asian Cinema > Japan > Drama

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

The official title of I Live in Fear is Record of a Living Being, and coming as it did after Kurosawa's triumphant Seven Samurai it was perhaps inevitably a box-office failure. With barely a decade passing after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese filmgoers avoided this serious drama about the gloomy specter of nuclear annihilation. It's not always an easy film to watch, but that's only because the story wields substantial emotional power, taking form as a kind of modern King Lear with its scenario of family strife and internal plotting. As such, it bears tangential relationship to Kurosawa's own rendition of Lear, his final epic Ran.

Playing a character twice his age, Toshirô Mifune (barely recognizable from Seven Samurai) is the patriarch of a large extended family (the "I" of the title) who has decided to move to a Brazilian farm to escape the psychological torment of the atomic bomb. Charging him with "mental incompetence," his adult children plot to override his decision, and a mediator (Takashi Shimura) attempts to balance the battle. This turns the film (like much of Kurosawa's work) into a quest for truth: Is the father insane with fear? Are his fears truly justified? In Japan of the 1950s these were not easy questions, and the death during production of Kurosawa's best friend (composer Fumio Hayasaka) lends the film additional gravity and import. If the story and its execution seem at times ambivalent, it's only because Kurosawa (and Japan itself) was still struggling to find meaning--to create a record of a living being--in a world that could be destroyed at any moment. --Jeff Shannon

Product Description

Akira Kurosawa's I Live in Fear is an expressive, caustic, portrait of madness. Toshiro Mifune (Seven Samurai) portrays an ageing industrialist driven to madness over fears of a nuclear attack. The most frightening aspect of Kurosawa's film is not the threat of nuclear annihilation, but the very proliferation of man's inhumanity and greed, expressed by the family's zeal to commit their father and keep their inheritances intact. Mifune's superb acting and Kurosawa's inventive mise-en-scene illustrate the tragic isolation that eventually overwhelms the helpless old patriarch.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nuclear Paranoia From A Master, October 17, 2000

By	Jerome Wilson (Greenbelt, MD USA) - See all my reviews

This 1955 release is one of those smaller Akira Kurosawa films that is overlooked in favor of his bigger films like "Rashomon" and "Seven Samurai" but it's still worth seeing. The great Toshiro Mifune plays an industrialist in post-World War II Japan who is slowly going mad with the notion that a nuclear war is coming and tries to convince his family (and his mistresses) to flee Japan with him. Mifune's obsessive portrayal is the stuff of great tragedy especially as he vainly pleads with his greedy family to leave and Takashi Shimura, the samurai leader in "Seven Samurai", is also effective as a counselor who tries to help straighten the mess out. The movie captures Japanese dread about the atom bomb, a subject Kurosawa would also treat in his masterpiece, "Ikiru", very well and with the greedy family closing in on a raving patriarch, brings to mind "King Lear", a tale the director would go back to many years later in "Ran". This is a small film from one of the world's great directors but a very good one.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars just must see, July 18, 2000

By A Customer

"Toshiro Mifune was the most logical of any other his movie." It will be when you watch the VHS in your house TV that you know this mean. And you may notice the fact you don't notice now. Very educational, however, has unique pathos with tear in my eyes.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Watchable, GREAT Ending, September 18, 2001

By	Jordan Mary (Miami, Florida USA) - See all my reviews

This film, originally "Record of a Living Being", is not among Kurosawa's greatest (Rashomon, Seven Samurai, etc.), which is just fine considering the achievements he has brought forth during his career. However, this film is good in its own way. First, Toshiro Mifune's role is different, as he plays a much older, family man, and plays it very well. Also, the entire film is good to sit through and is not dull. Plus, there is a clear message in the film about people who "live in fear" (although it is reiterated a bit too often). However, the best part of this film -- and perhaps the biggest reason to buy this movie -- is the ending. Here, Mifune's character gives one of his trademark, astonishing performances and mesmerizes, sort of similar to the way he did in "Rashomon". However, see the whole movie first before you fast-forward to the ending in the future.