Hacker Cinema
I Live in Fear
生きものの記録
1955 · Film · 103 min
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
An aging foundry patriarch, gripped by terror of nuclear annihilation, tries to uproot his family to Brazil. When they petition to have him declared incompetent, a family-court counselor witnesses his obsession slide into ruin—and asks whether ignoring the atomic threat is any saner.
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5 comments on Hacker News
I have not seen "I Live in Fear" yet. That being said, Ikiru is my favorite movie.
Thanks for sharing this.
Criterion or Kanopy according to JustWatch (in the US) https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/i-live-in-fear?utm_source=letterboxd&utm_medium=iOS
Kanopy is awesome - you get streaming free credits through being signed up to the local library.
I recently watched Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice which also deals with the threat of nuclear destruction. The main character is having a birthday dinner when the news informs everybody about the nuclear threat. The simplicity in which this information is revealed and the transition from the mundane to abject fear connected really well to modern times.
It's interesting seeing film ideas repeat and be interpreted by multiple directors. It's almost like some ideas need to bounce from director to director before they find the right outlet. I Live In Fear begets Dr Strangelove begets The Sacrifice.
One of the sections of this article that struck me as particularly relevant right now was this passage:
"Kurosawa later claimed that I Live in Fear was inspired by conversations he had with his longtime film composer Fumio Hayasaka, who had become seriously ill during the making of Seven Samurai. Hayasaka had said to him, “The world has come to such a state that we don’t really know what is in store for us tomorrow. I wouldn’t even know how to go on living – I’m that uncertain. Uncertainties, nothing but uncertainties. Every day there are fewer and fewer places that are safe. Soon there will be no place at all.”
Hayasaka died during the filming, and "Kurosawa was devastated by his friend’s death", which affected the direction the film took.
You may be right, I don't know enough to say. Perhaps it was wishful thinking in retrospect. (He said it in the 1960s when the nuclear genie was definitely out of the bottle and causing major headaches for everyone.)
There is a 1950s fictional film by Akira Kurosawa called "I Live in Fear" which tells the story of a man driven mad by fear of radiation from a nuclear war. For better or worse it is easy to forget now what a catastrophic thing the introduction of the bomb was for everyone.