Japan
1949
122 minutes
Black and White
1.33:1
Japanese
233
A bad day gets worse for young detective Murakami when a pickpocket steals his gun on a hot, crowded bus. Desperate to right the wrong, he goes undercover, scavenging Tokyo’s sweltering streets for the stray dog whose desperation has led him to a life of crime. With each step, cop and criminal’s lives become more intertwined and the investigation becomes an examination of Murakami’s own dark side. Starring Toshiro Mifune, as the rookie cop, and Takashi Shimura, as the seasoned detective who keeps him on the right side of the law, Stray Dog (Nora Inu) goes beyond a crime thriller, probing the squalid world of postwar Japan and the nature of the criminal mind.
| Murakami | Toshiro Mifune |
| Sato | Takashi Shimura |
| Yusa | Isao Kimura |
| Harumi | Keiko Awaji |
| Hondo | Reisaburo Yamamoto |
| Girl | Noriko Sengoku |
| Girl's mother | Eiko Miyoshi |
| Ichikawa | Reikichi Kawamura |
| Theater manager | Yunosuke Ito |
| Stage director | Minoru Chiaki |
| Nakashima | Masao Shimizu |
| Yusa's sister | Fumiko Honma |
| Yusa's brother-in-law | Eijiro Tono |
| Drinking-stall owner | Katsuhei Matsumoto |
| Kogetsu Hotel manager | Iida Choko |
| Ogin | Teruko Kishi |
| Yayoi Hotel manager | Ichiro Sugai |
| Director | Akira Kurosawa |
| Assistant director | Ishiro Honda |
| Writers | Ryuzo Kikushima and Akira Kurosawa |
| Producer | Sojiro Motogi |
| Editing | Toshio Goto and Yoshi Sugihara |
| Cinematography | Asakazu Nakai |
| Art director | So Matsuyama |
| Assistant art director | Yoshiro Muraki |
| Music | Fumio Hayasaka |
| Sound | Fumio Yanoguchi |
| Sound effects | Ichiro Minawa |
| Lighting | Choshiro Ishii |
Stray Dog is above all a film of atmosphere. The film establishes right away that it’s hot in Tokyo, and never lets us forget it for a second. By piling on naturalistic details to keep the heat constantly in our minds—fluttering fans, the mopping of brows, a cop hitting the back of...
Stray Dog, the ninth film directed by Akira Kurosawa, is a detective story that’s also meant to function as a commentary on the desperate social conditions of postwar Japan: a kind of neorealist cop movie. The filmmaker wrote his screenplay first in the form of a novel, because his...
Displaying 0 discussion topics.
