Film review: Snow Trail (1947)

I've figured it out: Toshiro Mifune is Lee Marvin. 

Hear me out: Mifune is obviously better than Lee Marvin, but Lee Marvin is pretty damn good, and their career arcs (minus maybe Cat Ballou and Paint Your Wagon) are pretty similar.  Lee Marvin starts out playing nasty heavy types in movies like The Big Heat but moves on to play stoic leading men in films like Point Blank.  In between he shows that he can play wild-and-crazy types (The Wild One).  Well, this is Mifune's debut film (of course the reason we watched it) and he's very much the irredeemable thug. (It's funny: he already has all his signature tics - the scratching, the pacing, and in this one, an unattractive habit of spitting while indoors.) His Wild One phase is Rashomon and Seven Samurai, and his Point Blank is Yojimbo.  Of course Marvin and Mifune actually appeared in a film together (John Boorman's Hell in the Pacific) so I'm probably not the first person this has occurred to, but I stand by it nonetheless.  The actual film I'm writing about is watchable, and has its charms, but Mifune is a little wasted.  He only lasts through the first 3/4 or so before he is dispatched by that other Kurosawa standby, Takashi Shimura (I see that Kurosawa actually wrote this one, even if it was directed by Senkichi Taniguchi), who is the protagonist, although you don't know it until that point, really.  Actually, the structure of the film is kind of interesting: it's a while before we even see Mifune or Shimura.  In the opening credits it becomes clear that a bank robbery has occurred, and the film opens on a police warroom discussing what to do about the three perpetrators, who have fled into the mountains.  (Perhaps the main strength of the film is its location: the "Japanese Alps".  Certainly made me want to visit.)  They discuss the very few options for the robbers to hide out - a hotel and a remote hunting lodge - beyond which there is nothing but snow and mountain.  So they set off for the hotel, knowing that the phone lines have been cut, but stating that this shouldn't matter because the hotel has a radio.  Cut to a person examining a radio and announcing that the valves have been removed.  There then follows a lengthy discussion between two hotel employees, one of whom has worked out that three of their visitors are the bankrobbers and is trying to convince the other.  The giveaway will be that the ringleader (Shimura) is missing two fingers on his right hand, but he won't take off a glove.  So they lie in wait in the hot spring waiting for him to take a dip.  Even then, he keeps his hand covered by a towel, so one of them uses a pretense to knock it loose.  Realizing they've been rumbled, the three lock up all the employees and force a party of laborers to strip and get in the hotspring while they go on the lam.  The cold and the snow start to get to them, though, and they are very relieved to find the hunting lodge.  They just have time to distribute the cash three ways (Shimura had it all up to that point) and talk about going their separate ways (Mifune's character is all in favor, but the third, who is the oldest, is very much against it) when they hear the cops coming.  They make a run for it but the old one is a straggler.  He's about to get caught by a dog when he turns and shoots at it and the sound triggers an avalanche.  This sweeps him away and forces the cops to retreat, giving Shimura and Mifune a reprieve.  They keep going until they spot some ski tracks and follow those to an alpine cabin (about which, if we remember the beginning sequence, the cops must be unaware).  Here the movie takes another turn: inside the lodge are three people: an old man (the owner), his granddaughter (who is in her mid-to-late teens, I would guess) and a youngish man (called Honda), whom we later learn is a mountaineering expert.  Our two robbers are welcomed in, and Shimura in particular is entranced.  The granddaughter is very warm and outgoing and plies him with honey tea, while also wheedling Honda until he dances drunkenly to one of their American records ("Oh Susanna!" I think).  Mifune, however, goes stir crazy.  Jami pointed out to me that while Shimura seems to fall in love with the family and their life, Mifune has only base motives and refuses to believe that others are not the same. He accuses Shimura's character of lusting after the girl, and when Shimura says she reminds him of his own daughter who died about that age, Mifune snorts and says he's heard that before. It's round about the time when Shimura's character is getting misty-eyed over the family's record of Old Kentucky Home that Mifune snaps and pushes Shimura to join him as he blackmails Honda (played by the impossibly gorgeous Akitake Kono) to lead them.  After a couple of occasions where Honda saves their lives (including just at the peak, where he breaks an arm doing it), they reach the top of the mountain.  Shimura wants to help Kono, whereas Mifune is prepared to let him rot.  Announcing that the money is wasted on Shimura if he's going to get got by the cops, Mifune pulls a gun on him and demands his share as well.  Shimura hands it over but then knocks the gun out of Mifune's hands.  It goes off... and hits Honda in the leg (some days it doesn't pay to get out of bed).  They struggle

and then eventually are out on a ledge when it gives way and they plummet... but Honda has the rope and eventually only Shimura climbs back up it.  Honda is in bad shape now, and Shimura resolves to carry him back to the cabin.  Along the way he asks why Honda didn't just cut the rope, given that he was being coerced by criminals.  "It's the climber's code - never cut the rope.  We are human beings bound together."  Yes, you've got it, this film has a MESSAGE.  And it could be ham-handed were it not for Shimura's very unshowy and affecting acting.  They make it back and the cops arrest Shimura, but Honda and the family think well of him and even play "My Old Kentucky Home" for him one last time as the cops march him away.
Should you see it?  Honestly, only if you're a Shimura or Mifune completist, but I'm not sorry we did.