La Montagne d'argent

A group of bank robbers flee into the Japanese alps to escape the police. After barely getting away from their hideout the path behind them is cut off by an avalanche and they have to hole up in a cabin whose friendly inhabitants know nothing of their true nature.

This was a really pleasant surprise. I didn't expect all that much since the only Taniguchi film I had seen before was the rather dull Lost world of Sinbad which ironically left me entirely cold.

The beauty and danger of these mountains is captured amazingly well, especially for the time. All I could think of was how this couldn't have been an easy production as I watched the actors struggle to move in meters of snow, scaling cliffs and looking insignificantly small in the vast landscapes.

This movie has an interesting pedigree to begin with, being the first film to bring Toshiro Mifune and long time acting partner Takashi Shimura together. It's also the first score of composer Akira Ifukube, most famous for the Godzilla soundtracks (and original roar) as well as the Burmese Harp and countless others.

Mifune is great as the young, cruel, greedy and unpredictable thug, who seems like a man who never came back from the war, but Shimura as the older, melancholic boss opposite of him takes the cake here.

The script by none other than Akira Kurosawa elevates what could have been a rather standard thriller of the time, by adding a lot of layers and nuance to the story.

While the war is never mentioned explicitly it looms large (hell it was barely two years ago at the time). More often than not it feels like a movie about soldiers coming home from war and unraveling rather than a mountaineering adventure. Our main characters are all clearly damaged. I'm sure if you had been in the audience back then you would have picked up on a lot more of these hints. Yet typical for a Kurosawa script there's a shimmer of hope and humanity that shines like a beacon through the dense mist.

While this isn't quite a masterpiece yet it has a strong atmosphere of solitude and a sweet mix of hopefulness and melancholia. It deserves to be much more widely seen and appreciated. If you like early Kurosawa or Naruse I definitely recommend it.

Three criminals on the run after a bank heist head for the snowy Japanese Alps and hole up in a remote mountain cabin with an elderly man, his granddaughter, and a local climber. The screenplay was co-written by Akira Kurosawa and stars two of soon-to-be famous director's regulars, Toshiro Mifune (one of his first films), and Takashi Shimura, as a young volatile crook and his older, more pensive gang leader respectively. The story is an uneven mix of harsh and maudlin but the cast is very good and the B/W mountain cinematography is excellent. The music is by Akira Ifukube (who 6 years later would write the iconic Godzilla March) and his choice of incorporating the classic 'Americana' tunes of Stephan Foster in a gritty Japanese crime melodrama seems odd but hearing the quaint tune of 'My Old Kentucky Home' while the three criminals trudge through the snow to shelter high above the tree-line is effective (but slightly surreal).

Three bank robbers are pursued across a dangerous snowy Japanese mountain range. They only have one hope and that is to rely on mountain-climbing expert Akitake Kono (Honda) who is stranded at the same mountain cabin as they are. The pursuing police are confident they will get the robbers. Mother nature has a few tricks up her sleeve.

It's a different setting for a film and the outdoor locations give it a welcome authenticity. There can be melodramatic moments and these supply unintentional humorous moments on occasion. However, the message of the film is sound and the story allows you to sympathize with one of the robbers - Takashi Shimura (Nojiro) - the leader of the gang. It's also funny to see how far American records can travel.

Thieves hide in a small lodge in the mountains as the police trail them. They decide to cross over the top but things go wrong (of course).

This was an early Kurosawa script and Mifune role and you can see lots of what came later in this fairly straightforward crime story. It's got some nice mountain photography and suspense even though it's nothing you can't predict or have seen before. Still worth it for the people involved.

It's quick moving and well acted so worth checking out if TCM shows it or you find a DVD somewhere.

Black and white, reasonable length, good score, check it out and have a good time!

Don't expect a cops-and-robbers film full of action here. This is a slow, pensive movie that is surprisingly touching in moments. The plot follows some hardened criminals finding their soft side, when hiding out in a mountain cottage with an old man and his good-humored grand-daughter.

The beauty of their snowy surroundings, as well as the generosity of their hosts, slowly begin to change the attitudes of our runaway bandits. But, crime does not pay, and the scenic mountains are also treacherous.

In other words, expect a poetic film that avoids moralization, but instead shows and explores. Images and sounds, including classical music (sometimes played diegetically on an old record in the hideout cottage), speak in layers, not in terms of black and white - very different from the typical gangster films of its decade.