User Reviews

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. 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.

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.

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.

For quite some while now, I have been a fan of Akira Kurasawa and Toshiro Mifune and have been getting through any films that they were involved in in any way. Having a friend who comes from Japan coming over a couple of days ago, we watched Snow Trail together(as part of the Hulu Plus Criterion collection) as we are both big film enthusiasts. And I have to say that I was very impressed, and find it a shame that it has been so neglected. It may be too short and maybe it starts off a little too slow. However, from the point where the bank robbers followed the ski tracks to the little lodge, the story even if we have seen it before is exciting and briskly paced. It looks beautiful too, the avalanche scene is very well shot as well as being tense, while the scenery is gorgeous, effectively exuding a sense of isolation and beauty also. Akira Ifukube's score is also a big part of Snow Trail's success, it has such a haunting and melancholic tone that fits the mood of the film brilliantly. Written by Akira Kurasawa himself, the script is engaging, and Senkichi Taniguchi's direction showing a certain delicacy and humanity, a style almost similar to Kurasawa's in a way. Snow Trail nowadays is known as Toshiro Mifune's first starring role, while he would later give even better performances Mifune's performance here is appropriately taut and his character's temperament really helps to elevate the tension. Setsuko Wakayama's Haruko has much charm and innocence also. Overall, obscure and worthwhile, whether you see it as part of the Hulu Plus Criterion collection or elsewhere I do recommend it, and hopefully one day it will get the recognition it deserves. 8/10 Bethany Cox

A group of bank robbers flee into the Japanese alps to escape the police. After barely getting away from their hideout the path behind them is cut off by an avalanche and they have to hole up in a cabin whose friendly inhabitants know nothing of their true nature.

This was a really pleasant surprise. I didn't expect all that much since the only Taniguchi film I had seen before was the rather dull Lost world of Sinbad which ironically left me entirely cold.

The beauty and danger of these mountains is captured amazingly well, especially for the time. All I could think of was how this couldn't have been an easy production as I watched the actors struggle to move in meters of snow, scaling cliffs and looking insignificantly small in the vast landscapes.

This movie has an interesting pedigree to begin with, being the first film to bring Toshiro Mifune and long time acting partner Takashi Shimura together. It's also the first score of composer Akira Ifukube, most famous for the Godzilla soundtracks (and original roar) as well as the Burmese Harp and countless others.

Mifune is great as the young, cruel, greedy and unpredictable thug, who seems like a man who never came back from the war, but Shimura as the older, melancholic boss opposite of him takes the cake here.

The script by none other than Akira Kurosawa elevates what could have been a rather standard thriller of the time, by adding a lot of layers and nuance to the story.

While the war is never mentioned explicitly it looms large (hell it was barely two years ago at the time). More often than not it feels like a movie about soldiers coming home from war and unraveling rather than a mountaineering adventure. Our main characters are all clearly damaged. I'm sure if you had been in the audience back then you would have picked up on a lot more of these hints. Yet typical for a Kurosawa script there's a shimmer of hope and humanity that shines like a beacon through the dense mist.

While this isn't quite a masterpiece yet it has a strong atmosphere of solitude and a sweet mix of hopefulness and melancholia. It deserves to be much more widely seen and appreciated. If you like early Kurosawa or Naruse I definitely recommend it.

Three bank robbers are pursued across a dangerous snowy Japanese mountain range. They only have one hope and that is to rely on mountain-climbing expert Akitake Kono (Honda) who is stranded at the same mountain cabin as they are. The pursuing police are confident they will get the robbers. Mother nature has a few tricks up her sleeve.

It's a different setting for a film and the outdoor locations give it a welcome authenticity. There can be melodramatic moments and these supply unintentional humorous moments on occasion. However, the message of the film is sound and the story allows you to sympathize with one of the robbers - Takashi Shimura (Nojiro) - the leader of the gang. It's also funny to see how far American records can travel.

There were some amazing actors in this film, but they were handed an acceptable script, and mediocre directing.

The co-author, Kurosawa, will prove to be one of the most memorable in cinema, but definitely not for this one. Misifune, will collaborate with Kurosawa frequently to emmence results. He shows a stellar performance even here, before his first official film with Kurosawa,. His co actors are able to tow the line with his first powerhouse performance.

Too bad the director is only okay, and script, average.

Otherwise fantastic film, a must see for any Misifune , or Kurosawa fan.

Don't expect a cops-and-robbers film full of action here. This is a slow, pensive movie that is surprisingly touching in moments. The plot follows some hardened criminals finding their soft side, when hiding out in a mountain cottage with an old man and his good-humored grand-daughter.

The beauty of their snowy surroundings, as well as the generosity of their hosts, slowly begin to change the attitudes of our runaway bandits. But, crime does not pay, and the scenic mountains are also treacherous.

In other words, expect a poetic film that avoids moralization, but instead shows and explores. Images and sounds, including classical music (sometimes played diegetically on an old record in the hideout cottage), speak in layers, not in terms of black and white - very different from the typical gangster films of its decade.

Thieves hide in a small lodge in the mountains as the police trail them. They decide to cross over the top but things go wrong (of course).

This was an early Kurosawa script and Mifune role and you can see lots of what came later in this fairly straightforward crime story. It's got some nice mountain photography and suspense even though it's nothing you can't predict or have seen before. Still worth it for the people involved.

It's quick moving and well acted so worth checking out if TCM shows it or you find a DVD somewhere.

Black and white, reasonable length, good score, check it out and have a good time!

People say the first collaboration between Kurosawa and Mifune was DRUNKEN ANGEL in 1948, yet here's this movie from 1947 with a script co-written by Kurosawa with the second lead by Mifune.... and the lead by Shimura. Other Kurosawa regulars in it include Akitake Kôno and Kokuten Kôdô. Yes, it was directed by Senkichi Taniguchi, but it feels like a Kurosawa picture to me.

Mifune, Shimura and Yoshio Kosugi have stolen some money and fled to the mountains. Kosugi has been killed in an avalanche, and the two survivors fetch up at a hunting-and-mountaineering cabin in the dead of winter, where Shimura makes friends with the owner and his granddaughter and Mifune blackmails mountaineer Kôno into helping them over the mountains before the police catch up to them, lest he kill the innocent.

Kurosawa's scripts always borrowed liberally from other nations' literature, and here I have the impression he was writing a German Mountain movie as if B. Traven had done the novel and then Warner Brothers had turned it into a movie. Had Kurosawa gotten wind of the production of THE TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE and co-written his script, with Mifune in the Bogart part.... and then cast his mind back to HIGH SIERRA for an earlier Bogart role for Shimura?

Maybe not. Taniguchi certainly brings a lot to the movie, with his co-writing, long shots of bright snow and unbreakable paths, as well as obdurate mountains. It's hard to tell at this distance who had written what and who had which insight. Film is a collaborative medium in which dozens, if not hundreds of auteurs collaborate; when it works, academics and critics like to assign the responsibility to one individual. When it fails, of course, the suits in the front office get the blame.

I saw this film for the first time in 2022, some 75 years after it was made, and thought it was amazing. The character study of the police, the bank robbers, and the people who were affected by the crooks' actions was very well done and so believable. This movie was about trust, betrayal, and revelation. I am thankful there were not any car chases or shootouts; those would have ruined the movie. The copy of the print I watched had a few flaws / glitches in it, but that did not distract from the film itself. I would put this film up against any other crime drama where the criteria were trust, betrayal, and revelation. It had me on the edge of my seat. Loved every minute of it.

And yes, my review does not include any plot lines - that would ruin it. You have to watch it yourself, not knowing what will happen next. That is the real pleasure in watching this film.

Japanese crime dram from Toho and director Senkichi Taniguchi. A trio of bank robbers (Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, and Yoshio Kosugi) hideout in an isolated snow mountain resort town. After a close call with the cops, they end up in small hunting lodge run by mountaineer Honda (Akitake Kono), young girl Haruko (Setsuko Wakayama), and her grandfather (Kokuten Kodo). In such close quarters, the robbers nerves begin to fray, as the snow piles up higher outside and the police close in. Also featuring Fusataro Ishijima, Fumio Omachi, Taizo Fukami, and Eizaburo Sakauchi.

Featuring a screenplay by Akira Kurosawa, this frigidly atmospheric crime picture is also notable for being the film debut of Japanese screen legend Toshiro Mifune. He plays a violent hothead, a character type he'd return to several times over the next decade or more. He's very charismatic here, lean and intimidating. Takashi Shimura turns in yet another fine, understated performance. The snow-capped mountain scenery offers some fantastic location cinematography, and the mountain climbing scenes are suspenseful. Mifune and Shimura would re-team the next year in Drunken Angel, directed by Akira Kurosawa, and it would mark a turning point in all three careers and begin decades of fruitful collaboration.

Oh to see this in color and widescreen! I only recently came to appreciate "Japanese Noir". This tale of people and mountains goes to the top of my list. Who knew that "My Old Kentucky Home" would be so poignant in a foreign language film. If you are a student of the 20th century human condition, this film will enhance your life. So many movies today take us to a dark place where the creators are determined to expose us to the most extreme sadistic violence. This, then, is naturally followed by a spiraling violent response justified as revenge. Snow Trail, in Mifune's character, certainly doesn't lack for evil. But Kurosawa provides us with the redeeming opposite side of human character. That is the distinction between exploitation and art.

Three criminals on the run after a bank heist head for the snowy Japanese Alps and hole up in a remote mountain cabin with an elderly man, his granddaughter, and a local climber. The screenplay was co-written by Akira Kurosawa and stars two of soon-to-be famous director's regulars, Toshiro Mifune (one of his first films), and Takashi Shimura, as a young volatile crook and his older, more pensive gang leader respectively. The story is an uneven mix of harsh and maudlin but the cast is very good and the B/W mountain cinematography is excellent. The music is by Akira Ifukube (who 6 years later would write the iconic Godzilla March) and his choice of incorporating the classic 'Americana' tunes of Stephan Foster in a gritty Japanese crime melodrama seems odd but hearing the quaint tune of 'My Old Kentucky Home' while the three criminals trudge through the snow to shelter high above the tree-line is effective (but slightly surreal).

"The rope that ties one human life to another is not to be touched."

A stunning, beautiful film. The story from Akira Kurosawa is wonderfully taut and meaningful, the on-location footage in the snowy mountains of Hokkaido is breathtaking, and the performances from Toshiro Mifune (in his first film!) and Takashi Shimura are memorable. It's impressive that this was director Senkichi Taniguchi's first film as well, as he showed such restraint and kept up a steady feeling of tension, while at the same time balancing the mood with scenes like the workers partying and the skiers in all that fresh powder.

The story on the surface is quite simple: three bank robbers escape into the mountains pursued by the police, not knowing that the only way out is over peaks only experts attempt to climb in the winter. Two of them manage to get to a ski lodge where they come across an elderly man, his adolescent granddaughter, and a mountaineer who is staying with them. These three are living in harmony despite the remoteness of this place, respecting nature, enjoying music like "My Old Kentucky Home," and kind enough to dig through many feet of snow to bury a pet pigeon which has (somewhat suspiciously) died. The two robbers bide their time, an avalanche having wiped out the road up to the lodge, but eventually fear its repair and take action.

The arc of Takashi Shimura's character is astonishing, and really elevates the film. Early on he's the tough leader of the gang, but while isolated in the lodge, with one of his men dead, he softens. In the young girl he sees his daughter who was killed, an interest Mifune's character tellingly mistakes for lechery, chiding him that she's young enough to be his granddaughter. Later, in the face of something bigger than the money or escaping the police, Mifune's character remains the same, cutthroat to the last, while Shimura's finds his humanity, seeing the sacrifice that his guide has made. He feels true remorse for what he's put the innocent people through, and how well they've treated him in spite of it.

All of this is heightened considerably by the on-location shooting in Hokkaido. The robbers trudge through a thick blanket of snow, the wind howling, and watch in horror as an avalanche descends. To them this is an alien world to be endured, whereas to the three locals, it's sublime. One waxes poetic about the ethereal sight of the rosen morgen, the rosy morning, as the sun hits the snow at a low angle, and I felt this even in black and white, with Taniguchi giving us those clouds billowing off the top of the peaks and the music swelling. Through it all, we get the sense of the smallness of humans in the face of the majesty of nature, physically speaking as well as in the sense of the pettiness of greed and cruelty, and yet the film is about hope and redemption. That's something that must have resonated in 1947 Japan, and still resonates today. This one is a hidden gem, and one to check out.