Sword of Doom
New 35mm print
A brooding, powerful performance by Tatsuya Nakadai as a bloodthirsty master bladesman gives "The Sword of Doom," The Toho Company's melodrama of old Japan, a cutting edge.
This is a stark, meshed and well-made film not for the squeamish. It has been adapted from a novel by Kaizan Nakazato under the mobile direction of Kihachi Okamoto, with a good cast of expressive players, including Toshiro Mifune, in a feature role. From an artistic standpoint, the master director of Japan, Akira Kurosawa, has bettered Mr. Okamoto in earlier re-creations of the era of Samurai might and ancient tradition, when family honor and life itself hinged on the sword.
But this film does well enough tracing the slow disintegration of an aristocratic, savage loner and his murderous determination to master fate at swordpoint. American moviegoers unaccustomed to head-on samplings of kimonoed mayhem—and even those who are—will find it a real grunt-and-groan sword-swinger, with the chop-choppingest climax, ever. Be warned.
This dreadful, climactic sequence of wholesale carnage, when the pent-up hero goes berserk in a houseful of assassin accomplices, splatters the eye. But smiting it simultaneously is the anguish of Mr. Nakadai. And this is the point of the picture, as conveyed by Mr. Mifune, in a firm, forceful performance as head of a fencing school. (H. Thompson, New York Times)
Sword of Doom
Sat March 18, 2006, 7:00 & 9:30, Muenzinger Auditorium
Japan, 1966, in Japanese, B&W, 119 min
Tickets
10 films for $60 with punch card
$9 general admission.
$7 w/UCB student ID,
$7 for senior citizens
$1 discount to anyone with a bike helmet
Free on your birthday! CU Cinema Studies students get in free.
Parking
Pay lot 360 (now only $1/hour!), across from the buffalo statue and next to the
Duane Physics tower, is closest to Muenzinger. Free parking can be found after 5pm at the meters
along Colorado Ave east of Folsom stadium and along University Ave west of Macky.
RTD Bus
Park elsewhere and catch the HOP to campus
International Film Series
(Originally called The University Film Commission)
Established 1941 by James Sandoe.
First Person Cinema
(Originally called The Experimental Cinema Group)
Established 1955 by Carla Selby, Gladney Oakley, Bruce Conner and Stan Brakhage.
C.U. Film Program
(AKA The Rocky Mountain Film Center)
First offered degrees in filmmaking and critical studies in 1989 under the guidance of Virgil
Grillo.
Celebrating Stan
Created by Suranjan Ganguly in 2003.
C.U. Department of Cinema Studies & Moving Image Arts
Established 2017 by Chair Ernesto Acevedo-Muñoz.