Historical Figure
Akira Kurosawa
d. 1998
Japanese filmmaker (1910–1998)
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Biography
Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker who directed 30 feature films in a career spanning six decades. With a bold and dynamic style strongly influenced by Western cinema yet distinct from it, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Known as a hands-on filmmaker, he was heavily involved with all aspects of production as a director, writer, producer, and editor.
Timeline
The story of Akira Kurosawa, told in moments.
Abandons painting and answers a newspaper ad for assistant directors at PCL Studios. He's 26, has no film experience, and beats out hundreds of applicants.
Rashomon premieres in Tokyo to lukewarm reviews. A Japanese film company submits it to Venice without telling Kurosawa. It wins the Golden Lion. Western audiences see Japanese cinema for the first time. The entire industry cracks open.
Seven Samurai. Three hours and 27 minutes. A village hires seven ronin to defend against bandits. The production runs so far over budget that Toho Studios suspends filming twice. It becomes the template for ensemble action films forever after.
Attempts suicide by slashing his wrists and throat. He survives. The Japanese film industry has abandoned him. No studio will fund his projects. He is 61 and believes his career is finished.
Ran, his adaptation of King Lear set in feudal Japan. He's 75, nearly blind, and paints every frame of the storyboard by hand because he can no longer see the dailies clearly. The battle sequences use 1,400 extras and real samurai armor.
Accepts the Academy Honorary Award from Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Both call him their master. Lucas modeled Star Wars on The Hidden Fortress. Spielberg has called him "the pictorial Shakespeare of our time."
Dies at home in Tokyo. He is 88. Thirty films in six decades.
In Their Own Words (7)
I like silent pictures and I always have. They are often so much more beautiful than sound pictures are. Perhaps they had to be. At any rate I wanted to restore some of this beauty. I thought of it, I remember in this way: one of techniques of modern art is simplification, and that I must therefore simplify this film.
On the style of the film Rashomon, as quoted in The Films of Akira Kurosawa (1998) by Donald Richie, 3rd edition, p. 79, 1998
In a mad world, only the mad are sane!
Ran (1985), 1985
Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing. This script portrays such human beings — the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they really are. It even shows this sinful need for flattering falsehood going beyond the grave — even the character who dies cannot give up his lies when he speaks to the living through a medium. Egoism is a sin the human being carries with him from birth; it is the most difficult to redeem. This film is like a strange picture scroll that is unrolled and displayed by the ego. You say that you can’t understand this script at all, but that is because the human heart itself is impossible to understand. If you focus on the impossibility of truly understanding human psychology and read the script one more time, I think you will grasp the point of it.
Criterion Collection essay on Rashamon, excerpted from Something Like an Autobiography as translated by Audie E. Bock (1982), 1982
Ignorance is a kind of insanity in the human animal. People who delight in torturing defenseless children or tiny creatures are in reality insane. The terrible thing is that people who are madmen in private may wear a totally bland and innocent expression in public.
Akira Kurosawa Something Like an Autobiography (1981), 1981
Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people. They often reveal much about themselves in a very straightforward way. I am certain that I did. There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself.
1981
Artifacts (15)
renewal, as it were, in his own person, of his father's life and reign
he panegyrist the opportunity to comment favourably on the similarities between father and son, and Eusebius remarked that Constantine was a "renewal, as it were, in his own person, of his father's...
It is a stupid clemency that spares the conquered foe.
eath the phrase "Romans' rejoicing". There was little sympathy for these enemies; as his panegyrist declared, "It is a stupid clemency that spares the conquered foe." === Maxentius's rebellion...
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