Stray Dog (1949, dir. Akira Kurosawa)

Stray Dog (1949, dir. Akira Kurosawa)

What Is It?: A rookie detective has his gun stolen on a crowded train and he must track it down before it's used in bombed-out, post-war Tokyo.

What About It?: A furiously-paced, humanistic noir thriller -- the first Japanese detective flick, if you can believe it -- Stray Dog is compulsively watchable and totally entertaining. Now, before we get ahead of ourselves here, we here at the Lost Classic understand the difficulty with subtitles and with older films, too. We find that if you can see acting styles and cinematic styles as a continuum -- that this led to and informed the things that we love today -- then it's easier to meet the film eye to eye, so to speak, and enjoy it as a movie. We aren't here to recommend movies that are good for you; to the contrary, we want you to be entertained -- which is why we all rent movies. And we love movies.

Why Should I See It?: There's a scene at the mid-way point of this film that feels like a great documentary about post-war Japan, with the main character, played by the esteemed Toshiro Mifune, wandering the back alleyways and black markets of Tokyo. It's both compelling and moving. And we swear that the fellow playing the titular Stray Dog looks exactly like Steve Buscemi when he first appears. Let us know if you agree.

Reserve it at the Multnomah County Library

-- ddt/pdx