Akira Kurosawa-Ikimono no kiroku ('I Live in Fear') (1955)

Both the final film of this period in which Akira Kurosawa would directly wrestle with the demons of the Second World War and his most literal representation of living in an atomic age, the galvanizing I Live in Fear presents Toshiro Mifune as an elderly, stubborn businessman so fearful of a nuclear attack that he resolves to move his reluctant family to South America. With this mournful film, the director depicts a society emerging from the shadows but still terrorized by memories of the past and anxieties for the future. Criterion




Kiichi Nakajima, an elderly foundry owner, is so frightened and obsessed with the idea of nuclear extermination that his family decides to have him ruled incompetent. Nakajima's fervent wish is for his family to join him in escaping from Japan to the relative safety of South America. Harada, a civil volunteer in the case, sympathizes with Nakajima's conviction, but the old man's irrational behaviour prevents the court from taking his fears seriously. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0048198/plotsummary)




Akira Kurosawa's I Live in Fear is an expressive, caustic, portrait of madness. Toshiro Mifune portrays an ageing industrialist driven to madness over fears of a nuclear attack. The most frightening aspect of Kurosawa's film is not the threat of nuclear annihilation, but the very proliferation of man's inhumanity and greed, expressed by the family's zeal to commit their father and keep their inheritances intact. Mifune's superb acting and Kurosawa's inventive mise-en-scene illustrate the tragic isolation that eventually overwhelms the helpless old patriarch. (amazon.com)