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Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) | |
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Japanese film director, considered with Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu among the greatest of Japanese modern film makers. Akira Kurosawa also collaborated on the scripts of most of his films and edited or closely supervised the editing. Several of Kurosawa's works were adaptations of Western literary works, including Dostoevsky's The Idiot, Gorky's The Lower Depths, Shakespeare's Macbeth (adapted into Throne of Blood) and King Lear (reworked as Ran). The director Steven Spielberg called once Kurosawa "the pictorial Shakespeare of our time." "I once asked Akira Kurosawa why he had chosen to frame a shot in Ran in a particular way. His answer was that if he he'd panned the camera one inch to the left, the Sony factory would be sitting there exposed, and if he he'd panned an inch to the right, we would see the airport—neither of which belonged in a period movie. Only the person who's made the movie knows what goes into the decisions that result in any piece of work." (Sidney Lumet in Making Movies, London: Bloomsbury, 1995, p. ix) Akira Kurosawa was born in Tokyo, the son of Isamu
Kurosawa, a veteran army officer who turned athletic instructor,
and Shima, who came from an Osaka merchant family. Shima was forty
years old when Kurosawa was born. Isamu took often his whole family to
the movies, and later Kurosawa said, that his father's attitude toward
film encouraged him to become a director. Kurosawa's brother Heigo
was obsessed with death. When Kurosawa was thirteen, Heigo took him to see ruins and corpses in Kantō, which had been destroyed by earthquake. The experience affected profoundly his way of perceiving life. Kurosawa recollected in Gama no abura (1981, Something Like an Autobiography) that through it he learned not only the extraordinary powers of nature, but extraordinary things that lie in human hearts. Heigo committed suicide in 1933, at the age of twenty-seven. Little later his oldest brother, Masayasu, died. Kurosawa's youngest sister, Momoyo, had died in 1920. In 1923, Kurosawa entered Keika Junior High School. He began
taking Japanese calligraphy lessons and became captain of the school's kendoclub.
For his father's disappointment, he was not interested in formal
training in arts. Moreover, he failed to pass the entrance
examination of an art school he applied. After joining the Proletarian
Artists' League in 1929, he contributed to a radical newspaper, and
took assignments as a commercial artist. Kurosawa's close association
with
Communists lasted a few years. Not much is known of Kurosawa's dark
years in 1933-35. Kurosawa began in 1936 as an assistant and scriptwriter to one of the most successful director's of the country, Kajiro Yamamoto, at Photo Chemical Laboratories. P.C.L., better known as Toho Studios, had been founded in 1929. Kurosawa's talents were soon noted. His scripts were awarded in contests and by 1941 he was directing whole sequences for Yamamoto's films. Recalling this period in his life, Kurosawa said: "Yama-san said: 'If you want to become a film director, first write scripts.' I felt he was right, so I applied myself wholeheartedly to scripwriting." (The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune by Stuart Galbraith IV, New York: Faber and Faber, 2001, p. 30) During World War II, Kurosawa did not serve in the army – he had been deemed physically unfit in his conscription examination in 1930. As a director Kurosawa made his debut in 1943 with Judo Saga, set in the 1880s. It was based on a novel by Tsuneo Tomita, a judo master and writer. Tomita's book depicted a skilled tough, Sanshiro, who learns the art of judo and self-realization under a guidance of a wise master. Despite "Western influence," film was well received in the war time Japan and shared the National Incentive Film Price. Censors reportedly demanded the cut of seventeen minutes from the film. In the sequel, Judo Saga II (1945), Sanshiro fights with an American boxer. In the following pictures Kurosawa dealt with the effects of the war upon his country and changes in the post-war society. The Most Beautiful (1944) was about young women working in a lens factory, drafted to aid in the war effort. Critics have used to describe it as a propaganda film. While the production was going on, Kurosawa met Yoko Yaguchi, an actress, whom he married in 1945. The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (1945) was banned by the American Occupation Forces due to ist alleged "pro-Feudalism." Kurosawa's collaboration with the actor Toshiro Mifune started from Drunken Angel (1948). "A young man was reeling around the room in a violent frenzy," was Kurosawa's first impression when he saw Mifune's audition in 1946. "It was frightening as watching a wounded or trapped savage beast trying to break loose. I stood transfixed." (The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, p. 69) Drunken Angel was about a gangster (Mifune), who suffers from tuberculosis and rises against a yakuza boss. An alcoholic doctor, fighting against disease in the vicinity of an oily sump, tries in vain to change his self-destructive way of life. "In this picture I finally found myself," Kurosawa said. "It was my picture. I was doing it and no one else." (Ibid., p. 91) In Stray Dog (1949) Mifune played a police detective, who is plagued by feeling of guilt when his pistol is stolen and used in a robbery and a murder. Stray Dog was remade in 1973 by director Azuma Morisaki, starring Tetsuya Watari and Shinshuke Ashida. Kurosawa gained international fame with his great series of films in the 1950s and 1960s, which mixed Eastern and Western styles and established him as one of the world's leading film makers. Rashomon received the Golden Lion at Venice Film Festival in 1951, the Best Foreign Film Oscar in the U.S., and opened up Japanese cinema to acclaim in the West. The production company had been first rather reluctant to submit the film, fearing incomprehension. Moreover, Kurosawa abandoned the idea of an objective narrator in a way which had much similarities with he French nouveau roman of the 1950s. John McCarten's crushing review consolidated early fears: "Perhaps I am purblind to the merits of Rashomon, but no matter how enlightened I may become on the art forms of Nippon, I am going to go on thinking that a Japanese potpourri of Erskine Caldwell, Stanislavski, and Harpo Marx isn't likely to provide much sound diversion." (The New Yorker, December 29, 1951; quoted in Some Like It Not: Bad Reviews of Great Movies by Ardis Sillick and Michael McCormick, with an introduction by Ed Gorman, London: Aurum Press, 2000, p. 42) The Finnish film critic Peter von Bagh saw that Rashomon was determined by its relationship to the time of its making; it was about narcissism, about ways by which people deceive themselves after the defeat in the war. "Teema liittyy läheisesti ja myös kipeästi teoksen valmistumisajankohtaan, jolle ominainen kollektiivinen itsepetos oli väistämätön seuraamus sodassa kärsityn tappion nöyryytyksestä." ('Rashomon - paholaisen temppeli,' in Elämää suuremmat elokuvat by Peter von Bagh, Helsingissä: Otava, 1989, p. 350 ) Moreover, the dark tale of a rape of a woman and murder of her husband has been interpreted as a philosophical examination of the nature of objective truth. Kurosawa himself once said that with this film he wanted to return to the beauty and heritage of the silent era. Rashomon, set in the eighth century Japan, was based on two stories by Akutagawa Ryunosuke (d. 1927). As with several of Kurosawa's following films, it was remade in the United States. In the director Martin Ritt's version, entitled Outrage (1964), Paul Newman with a very bad mustache played a Mexican bandit accused of rape – Claire Bloom was the victim and Laurence Harvey the husband. The acting in Rashomon is overstated in Kabuki fashion for dramatic effect but at the same time totally believable. Caught in a storm, a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) and a priest (Minoru Chiaki) tell to their companion a story which begins with the woodcutter's discovery of a corpse. An inquest is held. A captured bandit, Tajomaru (Toshiro Mifune), tells that he had followed a woman, Masago (Machiko Kyo), and her husband, Takehiro (Masayuki Mori), a samurai. He confesses that he had raped the woman and later killed the man but in a fair fight – the wife wanted it because she felt that one of the men must die to preserve her honor. Masago asserts that she was raped and wanted to die but she believes that she killed her husband when he disowned her. The priest confirms that the wife begged her husband to kill her and fainted. Through a medium, the husband claims to have committed suicide in response to the dishonour. For his shame, he had never seen his wife as happy as with the bandit. The woodcutter wows that Takehiro had been forced to fight – he felt that the rape had rendered her worthless – and that Tajomaru acted in self-defense. However even his objective testimony may not be reliable. A child appears on the gate of Rashomon and the woodcutter decides to adopt the child. Ikuru was awarded the Silver Bear at the fourth Berlin International Film Festival. It is generally considered one of the finest films Kurosawa made. The story focuses on a minor bureaucrat, Kanji Watanabe (Takashi Shimura), who tries to find meaning for his existence during the final months in his life. "The effect Ikuru can have on audiences is almost religious. Is it possible to watch Ikuru and not have it change you? Or is its effect much the same as Watanabe's impact on his co-workers? What does it mean to truly be alive?" (The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, p. 159) Throne of Blood was a dreamlike adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth, in which fog embraces the painterly cold images. When the film was released in the Unites States in 1961, the first reviews were largely critical — it was measured against the play and viewed as an unsatisfactory version of the original. "Its final impression is of a man who storms into a room with an impassioned speech to deliver and then discovers that he has forgotten what he came to say." (Kenneth Cavender, MFB; quoted in Halliwell's Film Guide by Leslie Halliwell, London: Paladin, sixth edition, 1988, p. 1050) Later critics canonized the film as a masterpiece. But The Hidden Fortress (1958) was a great commercial success. The American director George Lucas once told that two of its characters inspired his bumbling robots in Star Wars. The film won the International Film Critics Prize and the Silver Bear at the ninth Berlin International Film Festival. Dersu Uzala won the Academy Award as Best Foreign Language Film of 1975. Kagemusha (1980) shared the Golden Palm at the Cannes
Festival. With these and earlier achievements – and for his famous
perfectionism – Kurosawa was addressed by his colleagues at Toho
Studios as "Tenno" (Emperor). Kurosawa's regular working group
included among others the actor Katamari Fujiwara, whom he used more
frequently than he did any other actor, including Mifune and Takashi
Shimura, the composers Fumio Hayasaka and Masaru Sato, the
cinematographer Asakazu Nakai, and the art director Yoshiro Muraki.
With Ryuzo Kikushima he wrote a dozen scripts together. His own
production company Kurosawa had officially established in 1959. Kagemusha told of a double, a
thief, who is recruited as a standby for the leader of the Takeda clan,
Lord Shingen, and who becomes Shingen when the lord dies. Seven Samurai
(Shichinin No Samurai), the most popular of all Kurosawa's films,
started the director's samurai series. Even before the film was
released, it was attacked by critics in Japan, and as late as 1972 they
again expressed their general
dislike. Although Kurosawa has acknowledged the influence of
the classic westerns of John Ford on him, perhaps more
important was Sergei Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin
(1925). The story is set in the 16th-century Japan, in the Sengoku period, a time of civil wars. Farmers in a village find their livelihood under the threat from marauding bandits. They decide to hire samurai to save their village. "Hire hungry samurai," advices one peasant. A samurai warrior, Kambei (Takashi Shimura), recruits other ronin and one would-be-warrior, to defend the village. In the final battle, accompanied by hard rain, the bandits are defeated. The rain obliterates class separation, peasants and samurai are all melted into the same class. Only three samurai survive. "The winners are those farmers. Not us," Kambei concludes. Seven Samurai contrasts peasants and samurai, war and peace, pity and cruelty, selfishness and altruism, individualism and collectivism, earth and sky. Usually Kurosawa's films are slow but now he fully revealed his skills in creating fast action sequences. Seven Samurai was imitated in the Hollywood production The Magnificent Seven, in which the camera movements were more conservative. Missing were Kurosawa's images of the rain-swept nature. The Italian "spaghetti" Western A Fistful of Dollars,
directed by Sergio Leone and starring Clint Eastwood, was pirated from
Kurosawa's Yojimbo,
starring Toshiro Mifune. In a letter to
Leone, which the Italian director wrongly considered a compliment,
Kurosawa acccused him of plagiarism: "Signor Leone—I have just had the
change to see
your film. It's a very fine film, but it is my film. Since Japan is a
signatory of the Berne Convention on international copyright, you must
pay me." (Sergio Leone: Something to Do with Death by Christopher Frayling, London: Faber & Faber, 2000, p. 148)) Yojimbo was
remade in 1996 by Walter Hill as a gangster story Last Man Standing,
starring Bruce Willis. Hill's version, which was set in the 1930s, brought the story to the United States and in time close to Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest (1929), which perhaps had inspired Kurosawa. Sanjuro (1962), based on the story 'Hibi Heian' by Shugoro Yamamoto, was a lighweight sequel to Yojimbo, which made Stanley Kauffman ask in New York Herald-Tribune: "One wonders how the people who could make a film so superbly could be content to make one so shallow." After making High and Low (1963), a crime story dealing with kidnapping, Kurosawa received telephone calls from people, who threatened to kidnap his daughter. Red Beard (1965), in which Mifune, an older doctor, teaches the value of kindness to an younger doctor, won in Japan the prestigious Asahi Cultural Prize. Kurosawa wrote with Hideo Oguni and Ryuzo Kikushima the script for the thriller movie Runaway Train, a story about escaped convicts trapped in a train which is speeding toward catastrophe. It was eventually rewritten by Djordje Milicevic, Paul Zindel, and Edward Bunker, and filmed in 1985 by the Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky, starring Jon Voight, Eric Roberts and Rebecca De Mornay. Kurosawa's demanding working methods in the Japanese-American war film Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) clashed with the American studio system, and he resigned from the project already in 1968. In an unsigned report he was said to have beaten the clapper man over the head with a piece of rolled paper. When the assistant director refused to beat subsequently the rest of the crew, Kurosawa fired him. Next day all rested and tried to cool down. Despite international fame, Kurosawa suffered a deep personal setback in the late 1960s and early 70s. After Dodes Kaden (1970), a story about a slum, failed at the box office, Kurosawa attempted suicide – he slashed his throat six times and his wrists eight. When Kurosawa had recovered he spent nearly four years with Dersu Uzala, a Soviet-Japanese co-production, shot largely in Siberia. The gently, simply told film was based on Vladimir K. Arsenjev's (1872-1930) autobiographical book In the Jungles of Ussuri. Arsenjev tells of a hunter-trapper, named Dersu Uzala, a wise man who lives simple life in accordance with nature. Kurosawa's beautifully photographed 70mm film won the Academy Award as Best Foreign Film, but not as a Japanese but as a Soviet film. With Kagemusha (1980) Kurosawa returned to the large-scale historical epic, which continued in Ran (1985), a version of Shakespeare's King Lear. Although Kurosawa was the most famous Japanese director in the West, he had troubles in getting finance from his own country. Ran was made possible by the support of Francis Coppola and George Lucas. In the 1990s Kurosawa made his last and most intimate films, Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990), Rhapsody in August (1991), a family drama returning to the horror of the atomic bomb, and Madadayo (1993), an anecdotal story about a teacher and his former students. Kurosawa died on September 1, 1998, in Tokyo. His last script, After the Rain, was finished by the director Takashi Koizumi, who had known Kurosawa since 1970. The film also marked the return of Kurosawa's composer Masaru Sato, aged seventy-one, and the art director Yoshiro Muraki, aged seventy-five. The city of Imari on Kyushu, the most southerly of Japan's four main islands, was chosen as the site for Kurosawa memorial museum. Kurosawa made on Kyushu several of his masterpieces, including Ran and Kagemusha. For further reading: The Films of Akira Kurosawa by Donald Richie (1965, 3rd expanded and updated edition 1999); Akira Kurosawa: A Guide to References and Resources by Patricia Erens (1979); The Warrior's Cinema: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa by Stephen Prince (1991); Something Like an Autobiography by Akira Kurosawa (1982); Perspectives on Akira Kurosawa, ed. by James Goodwin (1994); Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema by James Goodwin (1994); Shicninin No Samurai Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai by Akira Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto (2000); The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune by Stuart Galbraith IV (2001); Seven Samurai by Joan Mellen (2002); Waiting on the Weather: Making Movies with Akira Kurosawa by Teruyo Nogami (2006); Akira Kurosawa: Interviews, edited by Bert Cardullo (2008); Akira Kurosawa: Master of Cinema by Peter Cowie; foreword by Martin Scorsese (2010); Compound Cinematics: Akira Kurosawa and I by Shinobu Hashimoto (2015); Rashomon Effects: Kurosawa, Rashomon and Their Legacies, edited by Blair Davis, Robert Anderson and Jan Walls (2015); Kurosawa's Rashomon: A Vanished City, a Lost Brother, and the Voice Inside His Iconic Films by Paul Anderer (2016); The Hero and the Grave: The Theme of Death in the Films of John Ford, Akira Kurosawa and Sergio Leone by Alireza Vahdani (2018); Akira Kurosawa: A Viewer's Guide by Eric San Juan (2018); Akira Kurosawa and Modern Japan by David A. Conrad (2022) Books:
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