Stray Dog
![Watch film Stray Dog — Stray Dog (1949) Original Trailer [4K]](https://www.acmodasi.in/amdb/images/posters/g/d/stray-dog-1949-Nu0dD.jpg)
Short description
In postwar Tokyo, a young detective named Murakami has his service pistol taken from him by a pickpocket on a crowded bus. The loss is more than a theft: it is a matter of honour that puts his position at risk. When the stolen weapon turns up in a series of crimes, Murakami sets out through the city's poorer districts to recover it, working alongside the older, more seasoned detective Sato, whose approach differs from his own. The chase brings him into contact with illegal gun dealing and with people struggling to get by in the aftermath of the war, and it draws him toward the man who has the pistol, whose circumstances resemble his own.
Akira Kurosawa directed from a screenplay he wrote with Ryūzō Kikushima, with Sōjirō Motoki producing. It is the third of the twenty-three films Kurosawa directed, following Drunken Angel the year before and preceding The Quiet Duel. Toshirō Mifune plays Murakami and Takashi Shimura plays Sato, among a credited cast of twenty-seven that also includes Keiko Awaji, Eiko Miyoshi, Noriko Sengoku and Noriko Honma. On IMDb, the film holds 8/10 from 23 critics' reviews, while on TMDB it holds 7.6/10 from 376 votes, indicating broad approval from both critics and general audiences.
What's left behind the scenes
- This film marks the debut of actor and stuntman Haruo Nakajima. A fight scene with his participation was cut from the film, but Nakajima later had a successful career and appeared in over 50 films.
- A significant part of the film was shot in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Assistant director Ishiro Honda and cinematographer Kazuo Yamada even ventured into areas controlled by the yakuza. In many scenes featuring Toshiro Mifune, Honda himself was filmed from the waist down.
- In his memoirs published in 1982, Akira Kurosawa noted that Keiko Awaji, who played Harumi Namaki, was simply a young dancer with no acting experience, and she was difficult to work with on set. She could not cry when required, so her sobbing in the relevant scene was dubbed. According to Kurosawa, toward the end of filming, Awaji began to realize how unprofessionally she had been behaving.
- As preparation for writing the screenplay, director and screenwriter Akira Kurosawa composed a version of the plot in the form of a novel. Writing the novel took six weeks, after which Kurosawa moved on to the screenplay and found that writing it had become even more difficult due to the vast differences between the formats. However, this experience later proved useful to Kurosawa as, by his own admission, he learned how to incorporate certain elements characteristic of literary works into his films, conveyed through the language of cinema.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
