Nakadai, a Stalwart of Japanese Cinema, Arrives in New York
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
From samurai showdowns to yearning melodramas, Akira Kurosawa to Masaki Kobayashi, the Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai has been, at his best, a chameleon of genre, mood, and directorial style. Film Forum’s long-planned multi-week series devoted to this versatile, handsome star, which begins Friday, harvests his 50-year career to yield a healthy portion of the most satisfying output from a reliable boom time in Japanese cinema.
The 75-year-old Mr. Nakadai, who lives in Japan but will appear in person at the theater for the first week of the program, enjoyed what has become a storied start in the movies. Trained for the stage, the actor’s exponential rise from smaller roles in the mid-1950s (and a walk-on in Kurosawa’s 1954 classic “Seven Samurai”) to anchoring the near-10-hour 1959-61 war epic “The Human Condition” is only the half of it. During the three years spent making Kobayashi’s multipart monster, he also tucked away the one-two samurai thrust of “Yojimbo” and its one-upping sequel, “Sanjuro.”
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