Yes, the Japanese team was one of cinema’s great collaborations. But Film Forum’s salute to Toshiro Mifune shows that he was a superb actor no matter who was in the director’s chair.Toshiro Mifune once wrote of his collaboration with the director Akira Kurosawa, “I have never as an actor done anything that I am proud of other than with him.”OK. Fine. Those were 16 pretty great movies the two of you made together. But you made roughly 170 movies! Never?We can judge whether Mifune, who died in 1997, was being a little too harsh on himself (and his many other directors) beginning this weekend at Film Forum, where a four-week festival will present 33 of the great Japanese actor’s films, as well as a documentary, “Mifune: The Last Samurai.”It includes all the movies Mifune and Kurosawa made together — certified masterpieces like “Seven Samurai” and “Rashomon,” as well as less well-known but excellent pictures like “High and Low” and “Red Beard.” The chance to see them on a theater screen shouldn’t be missed.But a lot has already been said about those films — I don’t have much new to offer on “Seven Samurai” — and it’s the other half of the Film Forum program where you’re more likely to find some surprises.As a contract player for the Toho studios, Mifune never stopped working — according to “The Last Samurai,” at the peak of his career he appeared in 27 movies in a four-year period. Some of them were filler, no doubt, but the 1950s and ’60s were a great era for Japanese film, and when he wasn’t with Kurosawa, Mifune got to work with other top-flight directors like Hiroshi Inagaki and Masaki Kobayashi.Here, in the order they were made, are some highlights from the series’s non-Kurosawa productions. Mifune might not have been working with his favorite director, but watching these, it’s clear that he still brought his expressive physicality, his quicksilver emotion and his unparalleled charisma to the set every day.Mifune making his film debut as a bank robber on the lam in “Snow Trail.”Janus Films‘Snow Trail’Mifune’s first feature, a tense and bittersweet 1947 thriller filmed in the snowy mountains of Hokkaido, feels as if it could be a Kurosawa film. That’s probably because Kurosawa wrote the screenplay for the director, Senkichi Taniguchi. The 27-year-old Mifune had been discovered in a Toho cattle call for actors, and he’s shockingly handsome, with a wild lock of hair hanging down over his face. He also knew how to command the camera from the very start. As the youngest and most ruthless of a group of bank robbers on the lam, he’s a tight bundle of angry, nervous energy — you spend the picture waiting for him to explode. (As an older and more conscience-stricken crook, Takashi Shimura makes the first of many appearances alongside Mifune.)‘Samurai Saga’Mifune’s Macbeth in “Throne of Blood” is widely celebrated, but fewer people know that he is also an excellent Cyrano in Inagaki’s 1959 adaptation of “Cyrano de Bergerac.” It’s a kick to see Mifune in a role in which his mastery of language is more important than his looks and just as important as his fighting ability (though swordplay is crucial to the story, of course). French 19th-century romance transfers well to the 17th-century Shogunate; Inagaki stages the famous first-act poetry duel on a Kabuki stage, with Mifune dealing sword blows between verses to an entire company of attackers. And Mifune’s ability to play the alpha male with notes of humor and abashment suits him perfectly when it comes to the ultimate rom-com hero.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More
