The Rickshaw Man

Kokura, in the Meiji period. Matsugoro pulls a rickshaw in the city: a brawler, a drinker, a man who defers to nobody. One day he carries an injured boy home. The child's father is an officer who falls ill and dies soon after. What is left is the widow Yoshioka and her son Toshio. Matsugoro takes the boy under his wing, teaching him to fight, to wrestle, to beat a drum. He feels something for the woman as well. But class stands between them and he never once says it out loud. Hiroshi Inagaki directs; a hundred and three minutes, with Toshirō Mifune as Matsugoro and Hideko Takamine as Yoshioka. Inagaki had filmed the same story in 1943; that version was cut both by the Japanese censors and by the occupation authorities. This second version won the Golden Lion at Venice in 1958.