AK 100: 25 Films by Akira Kurosawa [Criterion Collection] [25 Discs] [With Book]AK 100: 25 Films by Akira Kurosawa [Criterion Collection] [25 Discs] [With Book]

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  • Studio:
      Criterion
  • UPC:
      715515052016
  • Year of Release:
      2009
  • Item Number:
      HVD002163
  • Release Date:
      12/08/2009
  • Format:
     

    DVD

DVD FEATURES:
AWARDS
  • Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
  •     Nominated Best Art Direction - 1980 (Yoshiro Muraki)
  •     Nominated Best Foreign Language Film - 1980 (Akira Kurosawa)
  •     Nominated Best Foreign Language Film - 1971 (Akira Kurosawa)
  •     Nominated Best Black and White Costume Design - 1961 (Yoshiro Muraki)
  •     Nominated Best Black and White Art Direction - 1956 (Takashi Matsuyama)
  •     Nominated Best Black and White Costume Design - 1956 (Kohei Ezaki)
  • Berlin International Film Festival
  •     Won Silver Bear for Best Director - 1959 (Akira Kurosawa)
  • British Academy of Film and Television Arts
  •     Won Best Costume Design - 1980 (Mieno Seiichiro)
  •     Won Best Director - 1980 (Akira Kurosawa)
  •     Nominated Best Film - Any Source - 1955 (Akira Kurosawa)
  • Cannes Film Festival
  •     Won Palme d'Or - 1980
  • Directors Guild of America
  •     Nominated Best Director - 1952 (Akira Kurosawa)
  • French Academy of Cinema
  •     Won Best Foreign Film - 1980 (Akira Kurosawa)
  • Hollywood Foreign Press Association
  •     Nominated Best Foreign Film - 1980
  •     Nominated Best Foreign Film - Foreign Language - 1965
  •     Nominated Best Foreign Film - 1963
  •     Nominated Best Foreign Film - 1961
  • National Board of Review
  •     Won Best Director - 1951 (Akira Kurosawa)
  •     Won Best Foreign Film - 1951
  •     Nominated Best Foreign Film - 1980
  • Telluride Film Festival
  •     Film Presented - 2002
  • Venice International Film Festival
  •     Won Volpi Cup for Best Actor - 1965 (Toshiro Mifune)
  •     Won Volpi Cup for Best Actor - 1961 (Toshiro Mifune)
  •     Won Silver Lion - 1954 (Akira Kurosawa)
  •     Won Lion of San Marco for Best Film - 1951 (Akira Kurosawa)
  •     Film Presented - 1971 (Akira Kurosawa)
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
REVIEWS:
  • {#Sanshiro Sugata} may be {$Akira Kurosawa}'s official debut film as a director, but one would never know it from the masterful way the young director dominates the film. {#Sanshiro}'s screenplay features many elements that would soon become clichés in martial arts movies (and which, truth be told, were perhaps not entirely fresh even in 1943), but {$Kurosawa}'s full-on, committed treatment of them makes them seem almost new and emphasizes again that often the treatment of material is more important than the material itself. {#Sanshiro} feels as invigorating as a slap in the face because the director mines the film for all the energy he can. Yet, typical for the director, he also knows how to make sue of silence and serenity for contrast; few nascent directors could have worked the "transformation by flower" sequence so well. {$Kurosawa} also includes many touches of Nature intruding upon, commenting upon or simply coexisting with the story, a signature of his that would be pronounced in many later works. Even in this film, one can sense the complex relationship that {$Kurosawa} has with violence and his recognition that if it is inevitable it still must be controlled. And he takes what could have been very two-dimensional characters and situations and imbues them with a life and a vividness that are essential to {#Sanshiro}'s success. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
  • One of the most successful {$Shakespeare} adaptations for the screen, {$Akira Kurosawa}'s {#Throne of Blood} strips away {+Macbeth}'s minor characters and long soliloquies, turns the witch scenes into a strange supernatural encounter, and transforms the Scottish landscape into a misty visage of feudal Japan. {$Kurosawa} masterfully employs style and composition to create a closed world in which the film's tragic outcome seems pre-ordained. Such visual motifs as fog, wind, and rain, juxtaposed with the austere interior of Washizu's castle, create an eerie, foreboding feel, while {$Kurosawa}'s use of stark blacks and whites, coupled with his persistent use of hard edits, seem to place the characters in stylistic confinement. Not unlike {$Michelangelo Antonioni}'s {#L'avventura} (1960), {$Kurosawa} uses repetition, such as the image of Washizu's emerging from the fog, to suggest the futility of the characters' actions. Rarely has a {$Kurosawa} film been rendered with such bleakness. {#Throne of Blood} is a visually brilliant, emotionally powerful masterpiece from one of the true masters of cinema. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
  • {$Kurosawa}'s light {\adventure} is probably best known as one of the primary inspirations for {$George Lucas}' {#Star Wars} (1977), but it's a masterful entertainment in its own right. {$Toshiro Mifune} stars as a famous general who uses a couple of clownish peasants to help him transport a gold shipment and a volatile young princess through enemy territory. The film was the pioneering effort of the Japanese film industry in the use of the widescreen ratio, and, in a sense, {$Kurosawa}'s brilliantly supple deployment of the process is the star of the film. Especially in the early sequences in the prison and the quarry, the director achieves extraordinary effects of mass and scale as he suggests the smallness of the squabbling peasants and the stature of {%General Rokurota}. He also uses the available space to spread the characters as far as he can, expressing the common distrust that is, at times, the only emotion these four very differently motivated characters share. {$Kurosawa} has often suggested to his actors that they imagine themselves as various animals in an effort to elicit a more overtly physical performance, and that seems to be the case here, as the slightly exaggerated ensemble acting style enhances the humor of a film that is sometimes reminiscent of an early silent. {$Mifune}, a virtuoso of physical acting, did all his own stunts, the most impressive being a horse-mounted pursuit while swinging a sword. Like {#Star Wars}, the film has something of the quality of a fairy tale, one which can be appreciated both by children and adults. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
  • {#Yojimbo} is both a brilliant reworking of the samurai genre and arguably director {$Akira Kurosawa}'s most influential work. {$Toshiro Mifune} gives the finest performance of his stellar career as Sanjuro, a bored, flea-bitten, and thoroughly amoral ronin who possesses almost superhuman swordmanship. Like a Greek god descending from Mount Olympus, Sanjuro comes upon a village torn asunder by two rival groups and cleans up the town. Like {$Gary Cooper} in {#High Noon} (1952), Sanjuro finds himself in a village full of greedy, weak, and bad people that probably does not deserve saving. Unlike {$Cooper}, whose face grows grim with the moral importance of his act, Sanjuro smirks with anarchic glee as he deftly picks one side against the other. With a wry, subversive wit, {$Kurosawa} marries his muscular narrative to a swaggering visual style, aided by the masterful cinematography of {$Kazuo Miyagawa}. From the Sanjuro's final duel with young gun-toting thug Unosuke ({$Tatsuya Nakadai}) to the single grotesque image of a dog clutching a human hand at the film's outset, {#Yojimbo} crackles with a dynamic energy that rivets and entertains. Though {#Yojimbo} spun off a number of remakes, including {$Sergio Leone}'s {#A Fistful of Dollars} (1964) and {$Walter Hill}'s {#Last Man Standing} (1996), none matches the film's technical brilliance and dark humor. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
  • {$Akira Kurosawa} takes on corporate corruption in Japan with a nod to {$Shakespeare}'s {+Hamlet}. The concept of honor, is often at the center of {$Kurosawa}'s work, as well as a sense of outrage on behalf of the exploited. Both figure prominently here as {%Koichi Nishi} ({$Toshiro Mifune}), plans to exact revenge for the death of his father, a corporate executive who was forced to commit suicide by his colleagues. In the famed opening wedding sequence, analogous to {+Hamlet}'s play-within-a-play, an enormous wedding cake in the shape of the corporation's office building reveals the manner of the man's suicide, shocking the guests. The {%Darwinian} atmosphere of Japan's feudalistic corporate world is laid open for inspection and condemnation by the director, as {$Mifune} tries to destroy the company from within. Coupled with the later {#High and Low} (1962) it suggests the high cost of idealism in the midst of corruption. It can be difficult to adjust to {$Mifune} in a business suit, and the relative restraint of his swift economical gestures, but he's again magnificent in part utterly unlike the samurai work for which he's known. The film has a stark, contrasty look, which, along with {$Kurosawa}'s characteristic geometric cuts, seems to suggest the moral absolutism of his vision. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
  • Rashomon's winning the Golden Lion in the 1951 Venice Film Festival is one of the key events of world cinema. Not only did it establish director Akira Kurosawa as one of the masters of the medium, but it compelled European and American audiences to look seriously at non-Western cinemas. Without Rashomon, the international critical successes of Kenji Mizoguchi, Satyajit Ray, and others are difficult to imagine. The film's structure, which replays the same event though different characters' eyes, layers ambiguity atop ambiguity. Not only are the witnesses' testimonies completely incompatible but the reliability of the film's primary narrator, the woodcutter, is seriously questioned. If the woodcutter initially lied about his role in this crime, then what else could he be lying about? The film comes precariously close to nihilism--the denial of all objective truth and the utter senselessness of existence. Yet Kurosawa pulls back from the abyss in the film's final moments. Though most of Rashomon is adapted from two short stories by famously misanthropic Japanese author Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Kurosawa himself penned the final sequence, an elegant summation of his signature humanism. The truth may be inscrutable, even unknowable, Kurosawa argues, but hope and compassion remain. This vision struck a chord in European audiences for whom the horrors of war were still fresh and the existentialist philosophies of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus were gaining popularity. Kurosawa's dynamic editing and swaggering camerawork seemed vibrant and sophisticated for a national cinema thought at the time to be second-rate, and the film proved influential to several generations of filmmakers. Ingmar Bergman included a sequence in The Virgin Spring (1960) strongly reminiscent of the film's most memorable sequences--the woodcutter's walk through the forest--and Alain Resnais acknowledged Rashomon's influence on the bold plot structure and existential content of his art-house classic Last Year at Marienbad (1961). In both artistic achievement and historical importance, Rashomon remains one of the masterpieces of cinema. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
  • This contemporary drama from Akira Kurosawa, better known for such sweeping samurai epics as The Seven Samurai (1954), is arguably his best film and the most articulate vision of his existential philosophy. The film's protagonist seems to spring directly from the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre or Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych: a tragic, pathetic figure who has so immersed himself in daily routine that he never learned to live. Only when confronted with his own imminent demise does he give his live meaning by building a playground over an open sewer in an impoverished section of town. The film is structured in a peculiar bifurcated arrangement: it begins as a straightforward plot that, halfway through, shifts into a fragmented narrative recounted in flashbacks by mourners at Watanabe's funeral. In the second half, we witness Watanabe's dogged struggle through the lenses of his baffled co-workers' own unexamined lives. Initially viewing his efforts with suspicion if not contempt, his workers fail to give Watanabe any credit for his single-handed effort to build the park. This section of Ikiru becomes compelling and ironic thanks to Kurosawa's deft depiction of Watanabe's inner state in the first half. Ikiru opens with an X-ray of Watanabe-a literal manifestation of his interior world. The rest of the section, through a tour-de-force of impressionistic and expressionistic cinematic devices, shows Watanabe's slow awakening from his quarter-century stupor to learn what it is to live. Takeshi Shimura delivers a staggering performance as Watanabe; his large pleading eyes and hangdog face burn a haunting image in the viewer's mind long after the film ends. The emotional force of Ikiru leaves the viewer feeling both transformed by Watanabe's evolution and contemplative about one's own life. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
  • Akira Kurosawa's final film is solely of note because of its association with the master, and is simply not in the same league as his great works or even his lesser works. Still, there is enough worthwhile to make it agreeable viewing, and there are the occasional moments where the old touch is present. The story of a retired professor adored by his students, who continually pay tribute to him and come to his rescue in times of need, has obvious parallels to the tributes paid to Kurosawa in his final years. The constant adoration of Professor Uchida, however, gets a bit much at times, and Kurosawa's sentimental tendencies go completely unrestrained, to the point of absolute mawkishness. The best moments involve the search for Uchida's missing cat Nora, Uchida and his wife enduring the ordeal of having their home destroyed and having to survive in a shack, the amusing bit in which Uchida is buying horse meat, and the beautifully filmed final scene. After such an incredible career, Kurosawa had certainly earned the right to indulge in sentiment and nostalgia, and Madadayo is not the awful exercise that some critics have dismissed it as being, containing moments of humor and genuine warmth. Nevertheless, it is ultimately a very slight exercise, and in the broader evaluation of Kurosawa's body of work, Madadayo registers barely a blip. ~ Bob Mastrangelo, All Movie Guide
  • Kagemusha was an atypical entry in the canon of Akira Kurosawa, the master of the samurai epic. At the time, Kurosawa was gradually losing his eyesight, and his films were developing an increasingly impressive visual splendor. However, in Kagemusha, the action sequences are much less thrilling than in Kurosawa's other samurai epics. Here his focus is on character development and philosophical discourse. The film swings like a pendulum between stillness and action, an occasionally jarring mix of David Lean-like panoramas with intimate character study. In Kagemusha (which translates as "shadow warrior"), Kurosawa examines the concept of the double as a means to delve into enigmatic and paradoxical philosophical issues of identity, power, self-worth, and leadership. At first, Tatsuya Nakadai appears a little stiff in the essential dual role of warlord and thief, but his performance relies on subtle differences of intonation and gesture to reveal the evolution of his character. As always, Kurosawa's exploration of the values of feudal Japan provokes contemporary audiences to make parallels with modern Japan, a tendency that did not necessarily endear him to his countrymen. In fact, by 1980 Kurosawa was such a persona non grata in Japan that he had not made a film in five years: Kagemusha would not have been made without the financial assistance of George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. ~ Dan Jardine, All Movie Guide
  • Even if the only available version of Akira Kurosawa's underrated drama of life in a city slum is a truncated one, the film's episodic structure doesn't noticeably suffer from severe editing the way a tightly woven narrative would. If nothing else, Dodes'ka-Den would be important as the master's first film in color; for Kurosawa, the decision wasn't taken casually. To reflect the moods of his cast of struggling characters, he alters the colors of the sky which shelters them. The obvious link to a previous Kurosawa film is his 1957 version of Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths, if only for its portrayal of people at the lowest rung of society. But by the late '60s, Kurosawa was clearly in a more hopeful mood, infusing many of this film's potentially downbeat situations with elements of optimism. It's a bitter irony that negative public reaction to such a film resulted in Kurosawa's nearly ending his life. Had his career ended with this film, it would have concluded on a work of middle rank; even so, that places Dodes'ka-Den high above the entire output of most other filmmakers. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
  • Widely considered one of the greatest films ever made, Seven Samurai was both the apex of Akira Kurosawa's long career and the high-water mark of the Japanese period drama. The film's action rivets the viewer in spite of the three-hour-plus running time: the battle sequences, among the best ever filmed, are immediate and visceral; and the characters are complex and so well-rendered that the viewer grieves when one dies. Like few other historical films, it captures not only the physical look of the time but also its essence. Like Jean Renoir's masterpieces Grand Illusion (1937) and Rules of the Game (1939), Seven Samurai illustrates the collapse of social distinctions and the growing irrelevance of old traditions in dangerous and chaotic times. Kambei shaves his much-prized topknot--the symbol of a samurai--to save the kidnapped child, while master swordsman Kyuzo is gunned down by an anonymous bandit with a musket. Kurosawa questions the division between samurai and bandit, between good and evil. In one scene, peasant-born Kikuchiyo heatedly argues that the samurai have been abusing and exploiting the peasants for centuries. In this framework, the samurais' acts of bravery, selflessness, and honor seem absurd, if not pointless. The peasants' choice of the samurai over the bandits is merely one of a lesser evil. Once the bandits are gone, the samurai will no longer be needed. This is underscored in the film's poignant end, when the surviving three samurai leave the village, receiving neither acclaim nor reward, as the villagers plant rice. American audiences were so impressed with Kurosawa's epic masterpiece that it was remade into John Sturges's Magnificent Seven (1960). ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
  • Akira Kurosawa takes on corporate corruption in Japan with a nod to Shakespeare's Hamlet. The concept of honor, is often at the center of Kurosawa's work, as well as a sense of outrage on behalf of the exploited. Both figure prominently here as Koichi Nishi (Toshiro Mifune), plans to exact revenge for the death of his father, a corporate executive who was forced to commit suicide by his colleagues. In the famed opening wedding sequence, analogous to Hamlet's play-within-a-play, an enormous wedding cake in the shape of the corporation's office building reveals the manner of the man's suicide, shocking the guests. The Darwinian atmosphere of Japan's feudalistic corporate world is laid open for inspection and condemnation by the director, as Mifune tries to destroy the company from within. Coupled with the later High and Low (1962) it suggests the high cost of idealism in the midst of corruption. It can be difficult to adjust to Mifune in a business suit, and the relative restraint of his swift economical gestures, but he's again magnificent in part utterly unlike the samurai work for which he's known. The film has a stark, contrasty look, which, along with Kurosawa's characteristic geometric cuts, seems to suggest the moral absolutism of his vision. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
  • The breakthrough film for both Kurosawa and key collaborator and alter ego Mifune, it was heralded by Japanese critics as the work of a cinematic master. The story was originally to have centered around the heroic, alcoholic doctor (Takashi Shimura), who runs a clinic for the indigent on the outskirts of a Tokyo slum neighborhood, but Mifune made such a powerful impression on the director that he expanded his role, that of a tubercular gangster, shifting the film's focus to the relationship between them. The doctor sees something of himself in the hard-drinking, self-destructive yakuza, and tries to get him to reform. The young Mifune is forceful and charismatic; even just leaning against a wall he exudes energy. His delirious swing dancing in an American-style club is alone worth the price of admission. Like much of the semi-documentary material shot against the backdrop of the city, to Kurosawa, it's evidence of the depravity of Japan, now occupied by American troops, with native traditions and customs fallen by the wayside. Similarly, the director returns to a shot of a disease-ridden sump outside the doctor's office, like the gangster's tuberculosis, a metaphor for the condition of the defeated country. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
  • With Yojmbo, Akira Kurosawa retreated into lighthearted black comedy and found the perfect protagonist for the journey in Toshiro Mifune's shambling, ill-tempered ronin. Forced to align himself with two equally repulsive forces, he chose to play them against each other, destroying both in the process. You could call the character a cynic, and the film nihilistic, if Mifune didn't, despite intimations of amorality, ultimately do the right thing. Thanks to substantial commercial success, Kurosawa and Mifune re-teamed for a highly enjoyable sequel only a year later. This time out, Mifune encounters a group of nine experienced samurai who, after Mifune saves their lives, follow him around like ducklings. When Mifune joins them in their quest to rescue an honest chamberlain from the false imprisonment of a corrupt superintendent, he teaches his by-the-book charges the secrets of deception and subterfuge. As before, Mifune plays his character always on the verge of exasperation, this time pushed to the limit by the civilizing presence of two women. When one calls him out, remarking that killing has become a bad habit for him, it may play like a joke but, as usual with even Kurosawa's lightest films, there's more at work than may be immediately apparent. An intense finale reinforces this point, and suggests that the humanistic Kurosawa, like his hero in the Yojimbo/Sanjuro series, can only strike a cynical pose for so long. ~ Keith Phipps, All Movie Guide
  • Sanshiro Sugata may be Akira Kurosawa's official debut film as a director, but one would never know it from the masterful way the young director dominates the film. Sanshiro's screenplay features many elements that would soon become clichés in martial arts movies (and which, truth be told, were perhaps not entirely fresh even in 1943), but Kurosawa's full-on, committed treatment of them makes them seem almost new and emphasizes again that often the treatment of material is more important than the material itself. Sanshiro feels as invigorating as a slap in the face because the director mines the film for all the energy he can. Yet, typical for the director, he also knows how to make sue of silence and serenity for contrast; few nascent directors could have worked the "transformation by flower" sequence so well. Kurosawa also includes many touches of Nature intruding upon, commenting upon or simply coexisting with the story, a signature of his that would be pronounced in many later works. Even in this film, one can sense the complex relationship that Kurosawa has with violence and his recognition that if it is inevitable it still must be controlled. And he takes what could have been very two-dimensional characters and situations and imbues them with a life and a vividness that are essential to Sanshiro's success. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
  • A stunning piece of international film noir, Stray Dog is a superb early effort of the legendary Akira Kurosawa. Coming just before Rashomon, the film that would establish the director's name and standing worldwide, Dog is one of his lesser known works but worthy of its place in the top of his pantheon. Yes, there are some quibbles. Dog is a tad too long. It lacks the sweep and grandeur of Kurosawa's epics. It occasionally repeats itself. But these are minor flaws in a major work. Besides, any film that contains the amazing nine-minute, almost dialogue-free montage of the underworld of postwar Tokyo, filmed surreptitiously and using many unsuspecting "real" people rather than actors and edited with impeccable precision, would be worth any number of flaws. And there are other impressive moments, including an lovely moment in which the beautiful nighttime vista suddenly intrudes glowingly upon the lead character and the girl he wants to help him, or the final chase section, in which one realizes that all of the tension that has been built up and released in the preceding 100 minutes has only been an exercise in preparation for the unbearable tension of this climax. But Kurosawa is not working strictly from a technical standpoint. He has created characters that bear deeper examination and provide unexpected rewards, and has placed them in a story that allows him to probe the necessity of choices, the effect of society on criminality and the state of the Japanese psyche in 1949. He's aided by a dead-on cast, lead by the perfect Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura. Mifune, young and hungry, is tightly coiled in Dog, a complicated mass of insecurity and bravado. Shimura plays the older and wiser partner as a living person, avoiding the clichés that are so often part of such characters. They are matchless performances in a dazzling film. ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide
  • Even if the only available version of {$Akira Kurosawa}'s underrated {\drama} of life in a city slum is a truncated one, the film's episodic structure doesn't noticeably suffer from severe editing the way a tightly woven narrative would. If nothing else, {#Dodes'ka-Den} would be important as the master's first film in color; for {$Kurosawa}, the decision wasn't taken casually. To reflect the moods of his cast of struggling characters, he alters the colors of the sky which shelters them. The obvious link to a previous {$Kurosawa} film is his 1957 version of {$Maxim Gorky}'s {+The Lower Depths}, if only for its portrayal of people at the lowest rung of society. But by the late '60s, {$Kurosawa} was clearly in a more hopeful mood, infusing many of this film's potentially downbeat situations with elements of optimism. It's a bitter irony that negative public reaction to such a film resulted in {$Kurosawa}'s nearly ending his life. Had his career ended with this film, it would have concluded on a work of middle rank; even so, that places {#Dodes'ka-Den} high above the entire output of most other filmmakers. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
  • Kurosawa's adaptation of Ed McBain's police procedural is a Dostoyevskian morality play told with dazzlingly choreographed long takes. Toshiro Mifune stars as a business executive who begins to gather a ransom large enough to bankrupt his business after getting a note from kidnappers about a stolen child. When his son turns up, he realizes that it was his chauffeur's son who was abducted, and must decide what course to take. Kurosawa's films with contemporary settings have often dwelt on the corruption of the powerful, in particular on the world of business. But here, as the prerogatives of business clash with personal obligations, it's a businessman who must run the gauntlet of conscience. The film's first act, dealing with Mifune's discovery and tortured decision-making process is a tour-de-force of acting and direction, shot in master scenes whose fluidity is abetted by the mobility and lightness of the shoji screens separating the rooms of the spacious house. The latter part of the film, which tracks the police investigation, points up the collective nature of Japanese law enforcement and features excellent performances by Takashi Shimura and, in an early role, Tatsuya Nakadai. After opening in relative luxury high above the city, Kurosawa then immerses one in the grimy, tightly packed urban nightmare below. As the kidnapper confronts his victim in a shatteringly conclusive scene, he illustrates the gulf between the two. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
  • One of the most successful Shakespeare adaptations for the screen, Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood strips away Macbeth's minor characters and long soliloquies, turns the witch scenes into a strange supernatural encounter, and transforms the Scottish landscape into a misty visage of feudal Japan. Kurosawa masterfully employs style and composition to create a closed world in which the film's tragic outcome seems pre-ordained. Such visual motifs as fog, wind, and rain, juxtaposed with the austere interior of Washizu's castle, create an eerie, foreboding feel, while Kurosawa's use of stark blacks and whites, coupled with his persistent use of hard edits, seem to place the characters in stylistic confinement. Not unlike Michelangelo Antonioni's L'avventura (1960), Kurosawa uses repetition, such as the image of Washizu's emerging from the fog, to suggest the futility of the characters' actions. Rarely has a Kurosawa film been rendered with such bleakness. Throne of Blood is a visually brilliant, emotionally powerful masterpiece from one of the true masters of cinema. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
  • Perhaps the clearest statement of the humanism that was the guiding force of Akira Kurosawa's career, it was loosely inspired by the Dostoevsky story The Insulted and the Injured. One of the most difficult shoots in the history of Japanese film, its two arduous years of production were marred by a series of skirmishes between Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, which would eventually lead to the end of their long collaboration. On its surface, the dynamics of this master-student plot might seem trite, and indeed the film isn't without the odd moment of cornball sentiment, but on the whole, its exploration of the harrowing journey endured by the haughty young doctor and his subsequent transformation is far closer in spirit to Dostoevsky than Dr. Kildare. Eschewing the visual pyrotechnics and virtuoso editing of his action films, the director opts for stark, austere master scenes better suited to the grim atmosphere of the clinic which is both the sole lifeline of its desperate patients and a medical boot camp for the sullen Yasumoto. While hardly scanting the suffering of these people -- especially a gruesome operation and and the treatment of a sexually abused girl -- Kurosawa makes clear that it is ignorance and poverty which are the true source of their misery. Yuzo Kayama gives a richly textured performance as the sulky intern, and Mifune, whose gruff character remains largely unexplored is as compelling as ever. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
  • Yojimbo is both a brilliant reworking of the samurai genre and arguably director Akira Kurosawa's most influential work. Toshiro Mifune gives the finest performance of his stellar career as Sanjuro, a bored, flea-bitten, and thoroughly amoral ronin who possesses almost superhuman swordmanship. Like a Greek god descending from Mount Olympus, Sanjuro comes upon a village torn asunder by two rival groups and cleans up the town. Like Gary Cooper in High Noon (1952), Sanjuro finds himself in a village full of greedy, weak, and bad people that probably does not deserve saving. Unlike Cooper, whose face grows grim with the moral importance of his act, Sanjuro smirks with anarchic glee as he deftly picks one side against the other. With a wry, subversive wit, Kurosawa marries his muscular narrative to a swaggering visual style, aided by the masterful cinematography of Kazuo Miyagawa. From the Sanjuro's final duel with young gun-toting thug Unosuke (Tatsuya Nakadai) to the single grotesque image of a dog clutching a human hand at the film's outset, Yojimbo crackles with a dynamic energy that rivets and entertains. Though Yojimbo spun off a number of remakes, including Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and Walter Hill's Last Man Standing (1996), none matches the film's technical brilliance and dark humor. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
  • Kurosawa's light adventure is probably best known as one of the primary inspirations for George Lucas' Star Wars (1977), but it's a masterful entertainment in its own right. Toshiro Mifune stars as a famous general who uses a couple of clownish peasants to help him transport a gold shipment and a volatile young princess through enemy territory. The film was the pioneering effort of the Japanese film industry in the use of the widescreen ratio, and, in a sense, Kurosawa's brilliantly supple deployment of the process is the star of the film. Especially in the early sequences in the prison and the quarry, the director achieves extraordinary effects of mass and scale as he suggests the smallness of the squabbling peasants and the stature of General Rokurota. He also uses the available space to spread the characters as far as he can, expressing the common distrust that is, at times, the only emotion these four very differently motivated characters share. Kurosawa has often suggested to his actors that they imagine themselves as various animals in an effort to elicit a more overtly physical performance, and that seems to be the case here, as the slightly exaggerated ensemble acting style enhances the humor of a film that is sometimes reminiscent of an early silent. Mifune, a virtuoso of physical acting, did all his own stunts, the most impressive being a horse-mounted pursuit while swinging a sword. Like Star Wars, the film has something of the quality of a fairy tale, one which can be appreciated both by children and adults. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
  • This contemporary drama from {$Akira Kurosawa}, better known for such sweeping samurai epics as {#The Seven Samurai} (1954), is arguably his best film and the most articulate vision of his existential philosophy. The film's protagonist seems to spring directly from the writings of {$Jean-Paul Sartre} or {$Leo Tolstoy}'s {-The Death of Ivan Ilych}: a tragic, pathetic figure who has so immersed himself in daily routine that he never learned to live. Only when confronted with his own imminent demise does he give his live meaning by building a playground over an open sewer in an impoverished section of town. The film is structured in a peculiar bifurcated arrangement: it begins as a straightforward plot that, halfway through, shifts into a fragmented narrative recounted in flashbacks by mourners at Watanabe's funeral. In the second half, we witness Watanabe's dogged struggle through the lenses of his baffled co-workers' own unexamined lives. Initially viewing his efforts with suspicion if not contempt, his workers fail to give Watanabe any credit for his single-handed effort to build the park. This section of {#Ikiru} becomes compelling and ironic thanks to {$Kurosawa}'s deft depiction of Watanabe's inner state in the first half. {#Ikiru} opens with an X-ray of Watanabe-a literal manifestation of his interior world. The rest of the section, through a tour-de-force of impressionistic and expressionistic cinematic devices, shows Watanabe's slow awakening from his quarter-century stupor to learn what it is to live. {$Takeshi Shimura} delivers a staggering performance as Watanabe; his large pleading eyes and hangdog face burn a haunting image in the viewer's mind long after the film ends. The emotional force of {#Ikiru} leaves the viewer feeling both transformed by Watanabe's evolution and contemplative about one's own life. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
  • {$Kurosawa}'s adaptation of {%Ed McBain}'s police procedural is a {%Dostoyevskian} morality play told with dazzlingly choreographed long takes. {$Toshiro Mifune} stars as a business executive who begins to gather a ransom large enough to bankrupt his business after getting a note from kidnappers about a stolen child. When his son turns up, he realizes that it was his chauffeur's son who was abducted, and must decide what course to take. {$Kurosawa}'s films with contemporary settings have often dwelt on the corruption of the powerful, in particular on the world of business. But here, as the prerogatives of business clash with personal obligations, it's a businessman who must run the gauntlet of conscience. The film's first act, dealing with {$Mifune}'s discovery and tortured decision-making process is a tour-de-force of acting and direction, shot in master scenes whose fluidity is abetted by the mobility and lightness of the shoji screens separating the rooms of the spacious house. The latter part of the film, which tracks the police investigation, points up the collective nature of Japanese law enforcement and features excellent performances by {$Takashi Shimura} and, in an early role, {$Tatsuya Nakadai}. After opening in relative luxury high above the city, {$Kurosawa} then immerses one in the grimy, tightly packed urban nightmare below. As the kidnapper confronts his victim in a shatteringly conclusive scene, he illustrates the gulf between the two. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
  • {$Akira Kurosawa}'s final film is solely of note because of its association with the master, and is simply not in the same league as his great works or even his lesser works. Still, there is enough worthwhile to make it agreeable viewing, and there are the occasional moments where the old touch is present. The story of a retired professor adored by his students, who continually pay tribute to him and come to his rescue in times of need, has obvious parallels to the tributes paid to {$Kurosawa} in his final years. The constant adoration of {%Professor Uchida}, however, gets a bit much at times, and {$Kurosawa}'s sentimental tendencies go completely unrestrained, to the point of absolute mawkishness. The best moments involve the search for {%Uchida}'s missing cat Nora, {%Uchida} and his wife enduring the ordeal of having their home destroyed and having to survive in a shack, the amusing bit in which {%Uchida} is buying horse meat, and the beautifully filmed final scene. After such an incredible career, {$Kurosawa} had certainly earned the right to indulge in sentiment and nostalgia, and {#Madadayo} is not the awful exercise that some critics have dismissed it as being, containing moments of humor and genuine warmth. Nevertheless, it is ultimately a very slight exercise, and in the broader evaluation of {$Kurosawa}'s body of work, {#Madadayo} registers barely a blip. ~ Bob Mastrangelo, All Movie Guide
  • {#Rashomon}'s winning the Golden Lion in the 1951 {~Venice Film Festival} is one of the key events of world cinema. Not only did it establish director {$Akira Kurosawa} as one of the masters of the medium, but it compelled European and American audiences to look seriously at non-Western cinemas. Without {#Rashomon}, the international critical successes of {$Kenji Mizoguchi}, {$Satyajit Ray}, and others are difficult to imagine. The film's structure, which replays the same event though different characters' eyes, layers ambiguity atop ambiguity. Not only are the witnesses' testimonies completely incompatible but the reliability of the film's primary narrator, the woodcutter, is seriously questioned. If the woodcutter initially lied about his role in this crime, then what else could he be lying about? The film comes precariously close to nihilism--the denial of all objective truth and the utter senselessness of existence. Yet Kurosawa pulls back from the abyss in the film's final moments. Though most of {#Rashomon} is adapted from two short stories by famously misanthropic Japanese author {$Ryunosuke Akutagawa}, Kurosawa himself penned the final sequence, an elegant summation of his signature humanism. The truth may be inscrutable, even unknowable, Kurosawa argues, but hope and compassion remain. This vision struck a chord in European audiences for whom the horrors of war were still fresh and the existentialist philosophies of {%Jean-Paul Sartre} and {%Albert Camus} were gaining popularity. Kurosawa's dynamic editing and swaggering camerawork seemed vibrant and sophisticated for a national cinema thought at the time to be second-rate, and the film proved influential to several generations of filmmakers. {$Ingmar Bergman} included a sequence in {#The Virgin Spring} (1960) strongly reminiscent of the film's most memorable sequences--the woodcutter's walk through the forest--and {$Alain Resnais} acknowledged {#Rashomon}'s influence on the bold plot structure and existential content of his art-house classic {#Last Year at Marienbad} (1961). In both artistic achievement and historical importance, {#Rashomon} remains one of the masterpieces of cinema. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
  • The breakthrough film for both {$Kurosawa} and key collaborator and alter ego {$Mifune}, it was heralded by Japanese critics as the work of a cinematic master. The story was originally to have centered around the heroic, alcoholic doctor ({$Takashi Shimura}), who runs a clinic for the indigent on the outskirts of a Tokyo slum neighborhood, but {$Mifune} made such a powerful impression on the director that he expanded his role, that of a tubercular gangster, shifting the film's focus to the relationship between them. The doctor sees something of himself in the hard-drinking, self-destructive yakuza, and tries to get him to reform. The young {$Mifune} is forceful and charismatic; even just leaning against a wall he exudes energy. His delirious swing dancing in an American-style club is alone worth the price of admission. Like much of the semi-{\documentary} material shot against the backdrop of the city, to {$Kurosawa}, it's evidence of the depravity of Japan, now occupied by American troops, with native traditions and customs fallen by the wayside. Similarly, the director returns to a shot of a disease-ridden sump outside the doctor's office, like the gangster's tuberculosis, a metaphor for the condition of the defeated country. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
  • {#Kagemusha} was an atypical entry in the canon of {$Akira Kurosawa}, the master of the samurai epic. At the time, {$Kurosawa} was gradually losing his eyesight, and his films were developing an increasingly impressive visual splendor. However, in {#Kagemusha}, the action sequences are much less thrilling than in {$Kurosawa}'s other samurai epics. Here his focus is on character development and philosophical discourse. The film swings like a pendulum between stillness and action, an occasionally jarring mix of {$David Lean}-like panoramas with intimate character study. In {#Kagemusha} (which translates as "shadow warrior"), {$Kurosawa} examines the concept of the double as a means to delve into enigmatic and paradoxical philosophical issues of identity, power, self-worth, and leadership. At first, {$Tatsuya Nakadai} appears a little stiff in the essential dual role of warlord and thief, but his performance relies on subtle differences of intonation and gesture to reveal the evolution of his character. As always, {$Kurosawa}'s exploration of the values of feudal Japan provokes contemporary audiences to make parallels with modern Japan, a tendency that did not necessarily endear him to his countrymen. In fact, by 1980 {$Kurosawa} was such a persona non grata in Japan that he had not made a film in five years: {#Kagemusha} would not have been made without the financial assistance of {$George Lucas} and {$Francis Ford Coppola}. ~ Dan Jardine, All Movie Guide
  • With {#Yojmbo}, {$Akira Kurosawa} retreated into lighthearted black comedy and found the perfect protagonist for the journey in {$Toshiro Mifune}'s shambling, ill-tempered ronin. Forced to align himself with two equally repulsive forces, he chose to play them against each other, destroying both in the process. You could call the character a cynic, and the film nihilistic, if Mifune didn't, despite intimations of amorality, ultimately do the right thing. Thanks to substantial commercial success, Kurosawa and Mifune re-teamed for a highly enjoyable sequel only a year later. This time out, Mifune encounters a group of nine experienced samurai who, after Mifune saves their lives, follow him around like ducklings. When Mifune joins them in their quest to rescue an honest chamberlain from the false imprisonment of a corrupt superintendent, he teaches his by-the-book charges the secrets of deception and subterfuge. As before, Mifune plays his character always on the verge of exasperation, this time pushed to the limit by the civilizing presence of two women. When one calls him out, remarking that killing has become a bad habit for him, it may play like a joke but, as usual with even Kurosawa's lightest films, there's more at work than may be immediately apparent. An intense finale reinforces this point, and suggests that the humanistic Kurosawa, like his hero in the Yojimbo/Sanjuro series, can only strike a cynical pose for so long. ~ Keith Phipps, All Movie Guide
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