Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island

Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island (宮本武蔵完結編 決闘巌流島, 1956) is the finale of Hiroshi Inagaki's samurai trilogy, ready to watch online on iFILM. Toshiro Mifune returns a third time as Miyamoto Musashi, the swordsman who has grown from a wild brawler into a master seeking calm in the blade rather than power.

Musashi is tired of killing. He turns down the Shogun's patronage, settles on the edge of a village and takes up a hoe, raising vegetables on a bare hillside. Yet his rival Sasaki Kojiro will not let him rest: the young, flawless duelist, certain of his own supremacy, challenges Musashi and agrees to wait one full year. Two women who love him, Otsu and Akemi, stay close, and the villagers need his arm against marauding bandits. Koji Tsuruta plays Kojiro, with Kaoru Yachigusa, Mariko Okada and Takashi Shimura rounding out the cast.

Inagaki steers everything toward one scene — the dawn duel on a Ganryu Island sandbar, where the two meet with a carved wooden oar against bare steel, gulls crying over the surf. The trilogy's opening chapter once took home an honorary Academy Award as best foreign film, and this closing part holds the same standard: lush color, an unhurried rhythm, a code instead of a pose. It's for lovers of classic jidaigeki, where a duel matters less for the strike than for what a man loses and finds on the road to it. Stream Samurai III: Duel at Ganryu Island (1956) online on iFILM.