Kurosawa: The Most Versatile Director of All Time

Kurosawa is one of my favorite directors. Every film of his that I've seen is very good. Dreams, for example, may have a couple of sequences that are too corny to my taste, but also some great haunting scenes (the snow storm and the soldier's tunnel stick in memory).

Red Beard made me shiver emotionally all through: a great tale of life and death.

The Seven Samurai is, so far, unsurpassed, as a moral action epic.

Ran is a very strong adaptation of Shakespeare, and has one of the saddest endings, in cinema. Not handkerchief sadness, but the feeling of emptiness and unjustice in all human struggle.

Kagemusha, Sanyuro, The Drunken Angel are also great films.

I haven't seen Rashomon yet.

I love Kurasowa - probably my favorite director of all times. I haven't seen the movies that he made that took place in 'modern' Japan....

littlek:

Among Kurosawa's "modern" films 3 stand out:

HIGH AND LOW...a detective thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat until the last second

THE BAD SLEEP WELL...a drama of corporate corruption, greed, and revenge

IKIRU...a poigant, neorealist-style tale of an old man confonting death

Thanks LarryR.

I'm shocked -- fbaezer hasn't seen "Rashomon," also remade as an American Western in "The Outrage." Actually my favorite with "The Hidden Fortress," "The Seven Samurai" and "Ran" close behind. "Dreams" was a noble attempt to make cinematic paintings and allows a lot of individual interpretation as to their meaning. The subtleness was unfairly equated to triteness and probably only because if they were redundant of anything, it was of Kurosawa himself. Can't help that reminding me of another great visual artist, Picasso.

There's a Kurosawa festival running right now in Philadelphia, where I live. Tonight I saw (for the second time in my life) DRUNKEN ANGEL, a 1948 film noir which marked the first Kurosawa/Toshiro Mifune collaboration. It is not a perfect film but it is awfully good. And there is nothing like seeing a classic black and white film on a huge screen with goood sound, the way God and Kurosawa intended it to be seen. I was thrilled to note that the audience, which was pretty big for a Sunday night in Philly, was almost all kids in their 20s. It is a good sign that they are drawn to seeing an obscure Kurosawa movie. there may be hope for Generation Y yet, between the turnout at the movie tonight and their participation in the peace movement against Bush's Iraq warmongering!!! Or am I grasping at straws?

Toshiro Mifune..... I cannot fathom why I find that man so sexy.

agreed.

i watched Ran again last night on dvd. the colors, the colors.........

BTW Rashomon is now out on dvd, rent it at the vid store

That's the restored "Rashomon" recently shown on TCM and the picture is much improved (not to mention the sound if you know your Japanese!)

Fbaezer, you should definitely check out Rashomon, i really enjoyed the telling of the story--and that is the point of the movie, without giving it away. It is my favorite, with The Hidden Fortress as a close second. Cheers to Larry Richette for this thread.

I'm sure everyone knows "The Hidden Fortress" as the basis for "Star Wars." Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and Kurosawa is certainly deserving -- that he's paid homage to Shakespear more than once is to his credit.

Yes, Larry, thanks for the thread (I'll hold off for a long time on Ebert's picks of Kurosawa films!). Kurosawa is, number one, a master storyteller and like Japanese art (such as Hiroshigi woodblocks), his cinematic imagery has a simplicity that is envied by most directors.

There are other great Japanese directors, most notably Kenji Mizoguchi, whom I also venerate. But Kurosawa is the one with the greatest emotional and dramatic range, as well as being the greatest technical virtuoso. How many people know that Kurosawa invented slow-motion action photography in THE SEVEN SAMURAI? Or was the first director to tell a story from several viewpoints in RASHOMON? Modern film as we know it could not exist without the contributions of Kurosawa, and I don't just mean STAR WARS!!!!

Kurosawa was as inventive as Kubrick, as emotionally involved with his subject matter as Copolla and as great a storyteller as John Ford. Although he didn't make the list of Sight and Sounds best directors since 1978, just go through the list and you'd find every director listed owes a lot to Kurosawa. "Rashomon" also, I believe, inspired James Clavel to write "Shogun" in the viewpoints of each of its principal characters. I don't believe that is a new device but it certainly was neglected as a literary device as well. Welles rather flirted with it and also Bergman but not nearly to the effect of "Rashomon." It took the Kurosawa genius of storytelling technique to bring it off as well as in that film. Cinema might still be stalled in the forties if it weren't for this director's inspired output.

Not sure if it's been mentioned by others, but "Throne of Blood" is unforgettable. I once got into a barroom discussion of it during an afternoon visit to Vesuvio's bar in North Beach, SF. Made the whole road trip worthwhile...

LarryR, I believe Leni Reifenstahl's Olympiad and Triumph of Will employ slow motion and stop action ... and considerably predate Samurai, though I could be wrong. That's just how I remember it, and I'm insufficiently motivated to rack up the videos and confirm my suspicions.

I tend to agree with Rashomon being the first cinematic treatment of a storyline rendered through successive and contradictory points of view.

No matter, Kurosawa is indeed a giant, and certainly among the pillars of modern Directorial Technique. The world is far the richer for his contributions, and his influence today is so pervasive as to be ubiquitous.

Ran remains to my mind one of the most moving, spectacular productions ever translated to film.


timber

I don't recall Riefenstahl using slow-mo as Kurosawa uses it in SEVEN SAMURAI. For one thing, camera technology was twenty years more advanced by the time Kurosawa shot his film. If you know anything about slow-mo it depends on the camera being able to shoot at varfiable speeds.

Lightwizard, I am surprised that you compare Kurosawa to Kubrick for inventiveness. I like a few Kubrick films but I would never consider him a master artist on the same level as Kurosawa. What inventions of Kubrick's affected world cinema the way Kurosawa's did? None, I would say.

What Riefenstahl did was to cut a few stills out of every second of film. I read that in a book: Interviews with Film Directors, edited by Andrew Sarris.

This can be seen, very clearly, in the diving-flying scenes in her film about the 1936 Olympics: Olympia.

Kubrick hasn't affected world cinema? "Paths of Glory" set a new standard for the war or anti-war film for the balance of the 20th century. It was never really equaled. There's enough inventiveness in that film for the next 100 years of cinema. "A Clockwork Orange" -- is there anything more inventive in Kurosawa? "2001" brought special effects into the era of CGI even before "Star Wars" and without the aid of computers. Trumbell was a strong collaborator but Kubrick came up with many of the effects including the final journey through infinity. The inventiveness in "Barry Lyndon" included filming entirely in candlelight for which Kubrick was instrumental in inventing a new camera lens and filters. It does depend on if one is talking about technical or storytelling invention -- I go with Paulene Kael on "Lolita," for instance, in Kubrick's rewriting of the script to bring out the satirical black comedy aspects of the story. Certainly very inventive. Again, all a matter of taste and perception but it doesn't in any way trivialize any of Kurosawa's versatility -- in fact, it was a compliment and fortifies the breadth of his versatility. Kubrick was also versatile. "2001" and "Barry Lyndon" are on two entirely different poles.

Here's the results of the 2002 Sight and Sound poll for the best directors:

1

Orson Welles

2

Federico Fellini

3

Akira Kurosawa

4

Francis Ford Coppola

5

Alfred Hitchcock

6

Stanley Kubrick

7

Billy Wilder

8

Ingmar Bergman

9

Martin Scorsese

9

David Lean

10

Jean Renoir




One may find the poll doesn't suit them, that's to be expected. However, of all the directors who have ever worked in the industry, Kubrick and Kurosawa are only a few knotches away from one another.