Stray Dog (1949)

[Guest vengeanceofhumanlanterns]

Anyone seen this Toshiro Mifune / Akira Kurosawa flick? I was thinking of picking it up, but I'm little hesitant about dropping $35 on it.

[Guest DragonMa55]

It's a pretty good little noir film from Kurosawa with some good social commentary to boot.

$35 sounds abit steep but it's definitely one of his better films.

[Guest Yakuza954]

All Mifune/Kurosawa collaborations are worth getting. Stray Dog would be the best film of many directors, but for Kurosawa it's one of his lesser works. Worth seeking out, but like DragonMa said, that price is a little steep.

[Guest Daisho2004]

vengeance, you can rent it online from Netflix.com if you want to check it out 1st. I have it in my queue to watch also. BTW if you want to buy it go to this web search engine for the best price: www.pricegrabber.com/

[Guest vengeanceofhumanlanterns]

Thanks guys, I'm definitely pickin it up now and Daisho thanks bro it's very appreciated.

[Guest Daisho2004]

vengeance, no problem that's what we're all here for, let me know how it is if you get to see it soon, post a review.

[Guest vengeanceofhumanlanterns]

Will do.

[mpm74]

The guys at cityonfire.com recently reviewed STRAY DOG.

[masterofoneinchpunch]

The guys at cityonfire.com recently reviewed STRAY DOG.

Interesting read. I meant to write on this earlier. This is a film I like a lot, but it has been years since I have seen my Criterion release.

I have some small quibbles on the review:

was one of a select few who took a noble stance at edifying post war audiences with personal featur*es like: The Judo Saga (1943), The Most Beautiful (1944), The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (1945) and Drunken Angel (1948). And despite censorship from an American occupational body, these pictures were structured to both preserve and cultivate an awareness of Japanese national identity, while concurrently reconciling with the savage realities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

This is kind of a strange statement because the first three were created during the war, not post-war*, had nothing to do with Nagasaki or Hiroshima (later Kurosawa films would) and the first two mentioned if they were censored were done by the Japanese.

* Small exception for The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail which was started before the end of the war, banned by the Occupational Forces though to make a long story short it was partially through the Japanese censors that this happened. Funny enough Kurosawa has more mean things to say against Japanese censors at that time than the American ones.

Stray Dog was the least favourite of Kurosawa’s productions as he felt it was “too technical!”

While he was not overtly fond of the film in quotes (he enjoyed making the film very much though, he writes about this in his autobiography.

Interesting to note that this film was an influence on Johnnie To's PTU. Kurosawa's biggest influence for this film was most likely the novels of Georges Simenon (Kurosawa has stated this, I am not familiar with the author.) Though I am curious if Kurosawa had seen much Tuttle or Tourneur before this film.

presented in his seminal ‘ronin’ masterpieces Yojimbo (1961) and Sanjuro (1962), where customized traits of suspense-building, raw emotion and explicit sword choreography were all majestically weaved to*gether on a rich celluloid tapestry that was far more appealing in the western hemisphere than in homegrown Japan.

One has to be careful of this canard (kind of like forgetting how popular Jerry Lewis films with in the United States, he was never as big in France as he was in the US). Kurosawa's films were indeed popular at the Japanese box office. He was not always popular with the critics, but his films usually made money and were seen by more people in Japan then they even did in the United States.