Or, The Rickshaw Man.
I hadn’t heard of this film till a couple of months back. Around that time, looking at Toshirô Mifune’s filmography on IMDB, I came across The Rickshaw Man, and was intrigued enough to decide I must look out for the DVD. Then, as if destiny too wanted to help me along, I happened to read Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s Rashōmon and Seventeen Other Stories. The stories—and Akutagawa’s biography at the start of the book—fascinated me. And when I read that one of Akutagawa’s sons grew up to be an actor, I went back to IMDB to see which films he acted in. And The Rickshaw Man was there.
As it turned out, Hiroshi Akutagawa doesn’t have a large role (though it is an important one) in The Rickshaw Man. But it was interesting to see this actor, whose father had written the two stories (Rashōmon and In the Bamboo Grove) on which Kurosawa based one of his best-loved films. And, of course, to see Mifune, who appears here as the epoymous rickshaw man, a poor rickshaw-puller named Matsu.
Dustedoff 