Berkeley filmmaker’s ‘Mifune’ doc bring to life cinema icon

Toshiro Mifune was one of the top global stars of the 1950s — back when movie stars were larger than life — and his work is so intertwined with film history that it’s amazing that no one, in the West at least, has made a documentary about him before now.

Berkeley filmmaker Steven Okazaki has stepped forward to fill that void with “Mifune — The Last Samurai,” a heartfelt and admiring look at the Japanese icon’s career.

Actress Kyoko Kagawa, one of the great actresses of Japan’s golden age, who co-starred with Mifune multiple times (as well as in films directed by Ozu and Mizoguchi) and deserves a documentary of her own; and Koji Yakusho, the top Japanese star in the 1980s and 1990s (“Tampopo,” “Shall We Dance?”).

Mifune was born in 1920 to Japanese parents in Manchuria — his father moved the family there for economic opportunity, establishing a photography studio.

Discharged from the army after the war, he was left with 1½ yen in his pocket and a blanket — which he cut up and tailored into a smart-looking coat and pants (his son, Shiro, proudly shows Okazaki the jacket, which Mifune kept for the rest of his life).

Answering an ad, he applied to be a camera assistant at the famed Toho movie studio, which was rebuilding after the war.

The good folks at Toho realized it would be a waste of talent to train Mifune to be a cinematographer; this dude was a star in the making.

[...] there’s Mifune’s unmistakable influence in the West.

The wealth of clips is inspiring — Okazaki clearly shows Mifune’s appeal — and I enjoyed some of the lesser figures interviewed, such as one fellow, a fight choreographer, who was killed by Mifune in the movies more than a hundred times, and another who wore the monster suit in “Godzilla” the same year he fought Mifune in “Seven Samurai.”

Small complaints include Reeves’ curiously lifeless narration, and I wish Okazaki had included more of Mifune’s non-samurai work, such as his excellent portrayals of corporate executives in a moral crisis in Kurosawa’s “The Bad Sleep Well” and especially “High and Low.”