More Treasures in Kurosawa Retrospective

Among this week’s offerings in the comprehensive Kurosawa retrospective at the Little Tokyo Cinemas are three infrequently revived films: “High and Low” (1963, today and Tuesday), “Red Beard” (1965, today through Wednesday) and “Dodes’ka-den” (1970, Wednesday through Friday).

In “High and Low,” Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct mystery “King’s Ransom” provides an ideal starting point for Kurosawa’s study of a man who must measure the extent of his responsibility to others in a society with a huge gulf between the haves and have-nots. Toshiro Mifune stars as a Yokohama shoe manufacturer who has just arranged a 50-million-yen loan in order to gain control of his corporation. His phone rings and a kidnaper (Tsutomu Yamazaki, more recently the star of Juzo Itami comedies) demands the very same amount in ransom for his only son. That the kidnaper has taken the son of the chauffeur by mistake only makes the manufacturer’s situation worse: must he face financial ruin in order to save the life of another man’s child?

Structurally, the film, shot in a superbly evocative black-and-white, is venturesome. As soon as the manufacturer comes to his decision, he literally drops out of the picture until almost the end. Kurosawa then concentrates on the police search for the kidnaper. The camera itself replaces the familiar, dominating figure of Mifune as it relentlessly probes the crowded slums and amusement areas of Yokohama in sequences reminiscent of similar passages in “Stray Dog” and “Ikiru.” “Red Beard” is a film of breathtaking beauty, extraordinary emotional impact and profound significance that dares to affirm that the individual does indeed possess the capacity to transform the lives of others--and thus his own life--through love. It is Kurosawa’s supreme accomplishment that he convincingly portrays good overcoming evil. The time is the 1860s, just as Japan is opening up to the world. Toshiro Mifune stars as a tough-minded doctor known as “Red Beard” who runs a clinic for the poor in Edo and who takes in hand a new assistant (Yuzo Kayama), a proud young graduate.

A drama of a shantytown community alongside a dump outside a large city, perhaps Tokyo itself, “Dodes’ka-den,” adapted from Shugoro Yamamoto’s “The Town Without Seasons,” unblinkingly embraces humanity in all its strength and folly, love and hatred, comedy and tragedy, to make a profound affirmation of life. Its title translates as “Clickety-clack,” which is what a mentally retarded youth keeps repeating to himself as he chugs up and down a path cleared amid debris, operating an imaginary streetcar. Information: (213) 687-7077.

The UCLA Film Archive’s retrospective “Directed by Michael Curtiz” continues Thursday at 5:30 p.m. with “20,000 Years in Sing Sing” (1933), an early prison melodrama and the only film Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis made together.

The 7:30 double bill, “Mystery of the Wax Museum” (1933) and “Doctor X” (1932), features just about the last two-strip Technicolor films ever produced. With virtually identical casts and crews, both are durably entertaining, as is so often the case with Curtiz films. In the first, Lionel Atwill plays a tragically disfigured proprietor of a wax museum whose statues seem exceptionally lifelike.

“Dr. X” is a familiar mad-scientist tale that today seems hokey rather than spooky. But if it sounds corny, it looks great. Information: (213) 206-8013, 206-FILM.