Director: Masahiro Makino
Studio: Toho
Cast: Toshirō Mifune, Yoshiko [Shirley] Yamaguchi, Takashi Shimura, Akihiko Hirata, Hiroshi Koizumi, Sachio Sakai, Ren Yamamoto, Toyoko Takegawa et al
Availability: No home media or internet streaming release. No known screenings within the past 15 years.
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I should have made this post last month for the film's 71st anniversary, but better late than never, I guess.
As of the time of writing, I have not seen this movie and am fervently searching for it. I've gone down many avenues, including contacting several individuals and institutions about it, but with no luck. I am certain, however, that the film is not lost, as screenings have taken place since the film's initial release¹. Toho also produced an English-subtitled version², but I'm unaware for what purpose. I will readily admit that there isn't anything particularly special about this movie in and of itself, apart from it having been Akihiko Hirata's very first film role, but that alone is enough to make me want to see it. (If you have a copy... you know where to find me.)
So I can't watch this thing, at least not currently, but what I can do is dump everything I know about it into, as far as I know, the only extensive English-language post about it on the internet. If I ever do get lucky enough to watch it, I will, of course, make a new post about it. There's also a Kinema Junpo issue with an article about the film from when it first came out, and if I lose my fool head and buy that issue, I'll make a new post about it as well. (Edit: Whoops.)
When I originally wrote this post, I said that I had never seen any pictures of Hirata from this film, which was true at the time, but I have since acquired volume 3 of Toho's Tokusatsu Eiga book series, and it contains the only picture I have ever found of Hirata's role in The Last Embrace. Hours and hours spent scouring the internet and this is the first time I've seen this picture.
Masahiro Makino may not be a name with the same kind of Western recognition as Akira Kurosawa or Yasujiro Ozu or someone like that, but he was an extremely prolific director, and before that, in the 1910s and '20s, he was also an extremely prolific actor as well. This means Makino was involved in Japan's film industry pretty much from its very beginnings - which makes sense, since his father was Shozo Makino, Japan's first professional film director. The Last Embrace was produced by Tomoyuki Tanaka, as many Toho films were, and the script came from an original idea by Tanaka and Toshio Yasumi, who was also a frequent scriptwriter for Toho.
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| extremely crusty poster |
As for the cast, it's all your usual Toho guys (and some gals), but fairly early in their careers³ for a lot of them except Mifune (for whom this was his 30th film) and Shimura. Yoshiko Yamaguchi has a bit of a cult following, from what I understand, and it's her presence in this along with big star Mifune that gives me any hope at all that somebody still cares about this movie enough to upload it to the internet someday.
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Yamaguchi's character seems to be the protagonist of the film. According to the plot summaries I've found, Yamaguchi plays a woman who lived in the mountains and was set to be married before her fiancé was killed in a sudden avalanche. She then moves to Tokyo, where she frequents a bar along with a group of poets, and meets a yakuza who looks like her dead fiancé (Mifune plays both roles). I am assuming Hirata has a very small role in this - he's probably one of the poets from the bar Yamaguchi hangs out in. His character's name is given as "alias Sandaime", which would imply some yakuza association, but I think that it is likely just a nickname as the group of poets seem to all have aliases. I've seen some posters with his name on them, but some without as well.
While the film itself is irritatingly elusive, its theme song, sung by Yamaguchi, is on YouTube for your delectation. There's a nice slideshow of images from the film and pictures of Yamaguchi that plays during the song, along with lyrics in Japanese. It definitely sounds 71 years old.
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| shoutout to the person who reblogged this on tumblr and just tagged it "#men" |
Some odds and ends to finish this off: Here is a post (in Japanese) from someone who has actually seen the movie. I believe this person saw the 2008 screening mentioned in my footnotes. Mifune's website has a bunch of pictures of him from the film here. In the process of researching this post I found a blog dedicated to Yoshiko Yamaguchi, which I have a deep appreciation for.
That's it! That's everything I know! I know for a fact that people other than me are looking for this, so I remain hopeful that I'll watch it someday.
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¹ A 2008 screening at the Shin-Bungeiza theater in Tokyo is confirmed from a user on Kinenote, and this blogger, writing in 2021, claims a screening about ten years ago. I have confirmation of a screening at the almighty Laputa Asagaya theater in 2005 as well. (What hasn't been screened at Laputa, honestly.)
² Galbraith, Stuart. The Toho Studios Story. Scarecrow Press, 2008.
³ I've heard conflicting information about whether Hirata was part of the fifth Toho New Face group (in 1950) or the eighth (in 1953). 1953 would make more sense considering his film debut was that year, but I don't know either way. As far as I know, ca. 1950 he was part-timing as an assistant director and doing theater club stuff after having graduated from law school.
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