Throne of Blood, based on Akira Kurosawa’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Toshiro Mifune plays a military general who cheats and murders his way up to the
highest rank of feudal lord, urged on by his ambitious wife and by the prophecies of a witch.
As Kurosawa described the film, “I enjoyed Macbeth and it made me think in many ways.
Many similar characters could be found in the age of civil war in
Japan, equivalent to the period Shakespeare is writing about in Scotland.
In many ways it was not unnatural to transfer Shakespeare's play to the age of
civil strife in Japan “. Look for the close-ups of Mifune in the final death scene (one of the greatest ever filmed).
The arrows stinking around him are real. Off-screen archers were actually shooting arrows within inches of Mifune. He later said “It took very little acting in that scene to look very scared”.
VHS-1957 B/W-Japanese W/English Subtitles-Approx. 110 min min.
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