Marvin and Mifume


I've often wondered how these two very fine actors dealth with and their personal thought playing the 2 characters as both were products of the propoganda and racial hate of their respective armed services while at war. Anyone?

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The two were both very antiwar and thus deeply committed to the film; they also got along well on the set, according to what I read in a biography of Lee Marvin. Both of them contributed ideas to the working script.

Marvin saw a lot of carnage and almost got killed himself. I've written a fair amount about his anti-war views and experiences on the Lee Marvin board.

Mifune had a fairly unusual background for a Japanese: He spent the first 19 years of his life in China because his father served the Japanese population in Darien (Dalian) as a Christian missionary. During WWII, Mifune was conscripted into an aerial photography unit. Given all this, I suspect it was not too difficult for him to take a more critical, distanced view of Japanese war hysteria.



Hell in the Pacific was his first US movie.

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Hell in the Pacific was his first US movie.




His first US film was Grand Prix

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I didn't know how father was a Christian missionary, that's interesting. It explains Mifune's physicality though, Missionaries often have to be physically strong and not easily sick. Growing up like that in an alien counter must've attributed to the young Mifune's charger.


I thought his father owned a photography shop or some sort?




Global Warming, it's a personal decision innit? - Nigel Tufnel

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There's a Mifune documentary where it shows he was actually part of staff preparing kamikaze air crews. If true, that's something that would be a huge trigger for Americans, especially any who experienced the attacks.

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