Snow Trail (1947)
Snow Trail (1947)
DVD5 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC 4:3 | 01:28:25 | 4,25 Gb
Audio: Japanese AC3 1.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subtitles: English
Genre: Drama, Action
DVD5 | VIDEO_TS | NTSC 4:3 | 01:28:25 | 4,25 Gb
Audio: Japanese AC3 1.0 @ 192 Kbps | Subtitles: English
Genre: Drama, Action
Three bank robbers, Eijima, Nojiri, and Takasugi, flee the police and escape into the mountains. At an inn high in the Japanese Alps, Eijima and Nojiri encounter a young woman and her father, as well as Honda, a mountaineer. The inn folk do not realize their guests are wanted criminals and the visitors are treated with great kindness. Honda volunteers to lead them over the mountains, but Eijima's paranoia endangers all of them as they make the perilous trip.
IMDB
One of these mysterious Hulu Plus Criterion releases is the little-known Japanese adventure film “Snow Trail”, most notable as being the first starring role for Toshiro Mifune. The story follows the fate of three bank robbers (Mifune, Takishi Shimura, and Yoshio Kosugi) on the run from the police, who hide out high up in the snowy Japanese Alps in a remote lodge inhabited by an old man, his granddaughter and an intrepid mountaineer (Akitake Kono) trapped there by a recent blizzard. They don’t know that the men are criminals, and a tense standoff starts to unfold. If this plot feels familiar, that’s because it’s been used dozens of times before by Hollywood, most famously in “The Desperate Hours” and the terrible remake.
Snow Trail (1947)
![Snow Trail (1947)]()
Despite the basic premise, there is a lot to like about this film. Fans of Mifune should definitely add this to their lists. His performance as the leader of the gang is gripping throughout, and the tension builds as he struggles to control his volatile temper with a taut, steely-eyed gaze. People more familiar with his later work will be astonished at how young he looks here – like a wiry, fierce Clint Eastwood in his early years. It was around this time that he caught the attention of screenwriter Akira Kurosawa, and it’s easy to see why he wanted this intense young actor to star in his later samurai epics.
Snow Trail (1947)
![Snow Trail (1947)]()
Other highlights include: a very tense and well-shot avalanche scene, the utterly charming performance of the young granddaughter Haruko (Setsuko Wakayama), and a haunting melancholy score by composer Akira Ifukube (who went on to write the famous theme for “Godzilla”), that perfectly captures the isolation, loneliness and beauty of these snow-covered mountains. Overall, I would recommend this as an unusual Japanese crime/adventure quickie for Mifune and Kurosawa completists and for fans of more obscure Japanese cinema, though with a short running time and a brisk, exciting plot, anyone would be able to enjoy this fine film.
Snow Trail (1947)
![Snow Trail (1947)]()
“Snow Trail” has not been officially released on DVD yet, but it is clear need of the full Criterion treatment. I would love some extras regarding filming in such a remote, mountainous location. Many of the mountain shots and action scenes set high up in the peaks seem very dangerous and complex for a movie shot in the late 1940s, and a behind the scenes feature would be very welcome. Visually, some clean-up is required, as many scenes are scratchy, and a ten-second sequence towards the end is almost completely disintegrated. Also, the sound is in dire need of a digital overhaul, to clear up the transfer pops and to equalize this gorgeous score, which seems mixed way too high. Now, because this is a relatively obscure film, I’m not sure how many prints even exist, but hopefully some work can be done to restore it.
Snow Trail (1947)
This peculiar romantic crime drama would probably be hailed as a classic if it were widely seen today, although it's not that tremendous; still, it's a deliberately unusual piece of work, and a generally neglected piece of Akira Kurosawa's filmography (as indeed are the majority of those pictures he wrote but did not direct, an alarming number of which have never even been shown outside Japan). It marks the formal debuts of Senkichi Taniguchi as director and Akira Ifukube as composer, but in the long run it's very much more a Kurosawa movie, shot through with his accustomed humanity, and full of surprises.
Snow Trail (1947)
![Snow Trail (1947)]()
Especially interesting is the way Takashi Shimura's criminal character develops, starting out proudly savage and then against all odds becoming a tender person, who ultimately cannot bear to kill the man who is loved by the woman HE'S in love with … because he can't stand the idea of hurting her. Toshiro Mifune's character, by contrast, seems redeemable at the start but grows increasingly evil – not at all what the filmmakers suggested at the start, and not at all expected. The film also boasts an astonishingly restrained performance by Yoshio Kosugi, who rarely met a piece of scenery he didn't like to gnaw upon, but who is remarkable here. Setsuko Wakayama and Kokuten Kodo are also superb; this is probably one of the only pictures that gave Wakayama a chance to shine, as for whatever reason she never became a major star in Japan.
Snow Trail (1947)
![Snow Trail (1947)]()
The snowbound location photography is excellent (much of the picture was drawn upon director Senkichi Taniguchi's own considerable experience as a mountain climber), and while Akira Ifukube's score is almost too energetic for its own good – he clearly thought that his first time out he ought to be scoring every different scene with a separate leitmotif, and GODZILLA fans might be amazed to hear his first version of the famous "underwater ballet" music from that original 1954 film already in here (more conservative viewers who avoid monster movies might have also happened to hear the identical music in THE BURMESE HARP) – Ifukube underlines the drama beautifully, and in the lengthy sequences that are without dialogue, he tells us most eloquently what the characters are feeling. When the elegy kicks in under Shimura's reappearance over the cliff, it's a heartbreaker. And yet there's hardly any music at all in the first hour, unusual for a film of any type at the time.
Snow Trail (1947)
![Snow Trail (1947)]()
It's not quite a masterpiece, but THE END OF THE SILVER MOUNTAINS is essential viewing for anyone who cares about Kurosawa, Mifune, Shimura, Ifukube, or indeed everyone who worked on this movie, and very clearly cared about it a lot.IMDB Reviewer
Snow Trail (1947)
Special Features: None
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