- published: 10 Jun 2014
- views: 7494
Tatsuya Nakadai (仲代 達矢, Nakadai Tatsuya?, born Motohisa Nakadai December 13, 1932) is a Japanese leading film actor.
He became a star after he was discovered working as a Tokyo shop clerk by filmmaker Masaki Kobayashi during the early 1950s.[citation needed] He became the favorite leading man of internationally acclaimed director Akira Kurosawa after a well-publicized fallout between Kurosawa and the legendary Toshirō Mifune.[citation needed]
Beginning in the late 1950s, he worked with a number of Japan's best-known filmmakers, starring or co-starring in five Kurosawa films, along with significant films made by Hiroshi Teshigahara (The Face of Another), Mikio Naruse (When a Woman Ascends the Stairs), Kihachi Okamoto (Kill! and Sword of Doom), Hideo Gosha (Goyokin), Shiro Toyoda (Portrait of Hell) and Kon Ichikawa (Enjo and Odd Obsession).
Notably, his long-term collaboration with Masaki Kobayashi invites comparison to the working relationship between Akira Kurosawa and Toshirō Mifune.[citation needed] Nakadai was featured in 11 Kobayashi films, including the The Human Condition trilogy, Harakiri, Samurai Rebellion and Kwaidan. The Thick-Walled Room marked Nakadai's acting debut. His next role was a little-noticed and uncredited one in Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai where he appears for a few seconds as a samurai wandering about town.
Akira Kurosawa (黒澤 明, Kurosawa Akira?, March 23, 1910 – September 6, 1998) was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, producer, and editor. Regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema, Kurosawa directed 30 films in a career spanning 57 years.
Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following a brief stint as a painter. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he made his debut as a director in 1943, during World War II with the popular action film Sanshiro Sugata (a.k.a. Judo Saga). After the war, the critically acclaimed Drunken Angel (1948), in which Kurosawa cast then-unknown actor Toshirō Mifune in a starring role, cemented the director's reputation as one of the most important young filmmakers in Japan. The two men would go on to collaborate on another 15 films.
Rashomon, which premiered in Tokyo in August 1950, and which also starred Mifune, became, on September 10, 1951, the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was subsequently released in Europe and North America. The commercial and critical success of this film opened up Western film markets for the first time to the products of the Japanese film industry, which in turn led to international recognition for other Japanese filmmakers. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Kurosawa directed approximately a film a year, including a number of highly regarded films such as Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954) and Yojimbo (1961). After the mid-1960s, he became much less prolific, but his later work—including his final two epics, Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985)—continued to win awards, including the Palme d'Or for Kagemusha, though more often abroad than in Japan.