This includes a complete list of films with which he was involved (including the films on which he worked as assistant director before becoming a full director), as well as his little-known contributions to theater, television and literature. Top 10 Akira Kurosawa Films. As Mifune’s enigmatic masterless samurai roams into a desolate town overrun by grotesque rival criminal gangs, the whistling wind whisks leaves down deserted streets through which a dog runs with a severed human hand clamped in its mouth and the grimy residents, cowering behind shutters, fear to tread. The story of an undistinguished, time-serving civil servant who, upon learning he has stomach cancer, channels his energies into one final positive act, building a children’s playground in a disease-ridden slum quarter, is truly heart-rending stuff. A loose adaptation of Ed McBain’s King’s Ransom, this tense police procedural drama focuses on the kidnapping of a successful businessman’s son, all within the broader context of a society that was rapidly becoming more affluent and seeing an increasingly pronounced wealth gap. The obvious influence of these more monumental titles makes it easy to overlook the more humanistic, personal aspects of the master’s wide array of low-key, contemporary dramas and potent literary adaptations. Find out about international touring programmes, BFI Film Academy: opportunities for young creatives, Get funding to progress my creative career, Search the BFI National Archive collections, Read research data and market intelligence, Search for projects funded by National Lottery, Apply for British certification and tax relief, Get help as a new filmmaker and find out about NETWORK, Find out about booking film programmes internationally. In movies like Seven Samurai and High and Low, director Akira Kurosawa took the cinematic language of Hollywood and improved on it, creating a vigorous, muscular method of visual storytelling that became a stylistic playbook for the likes of Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. Possessing a similar synthesis of psychological tension and austere formal elegance to its more claustrophobic companion piece, Throne of Blood, it is even bigger and bolder in ambition. With its accumulated wide-shots of threatening ranks of horsemen clutching banners assembled on distant hilltops and a standout scene in which overthrown warlord Hidetora wanders in a confused daze from the apocalyptic conflagration of his besieged castle, every image is so meticulously composed, every scene so perfectly constructed, as to provide the kind of satori moments of transcendent stupefaction all but lost in the CG age. Introduction Akira Kurosawa, a man who would have turned one hundred years old in September 1998, will always be considered as one of the influential moviemakers in cinema history. Akira Kurosawa (23 March 1910 — 6 September 1998) is one of Japanese cinema’s few household names in the west, due to such groundbreaking jidaigeki period action films as Seven Samurai (1954), The Hidden Fortress (1958) and Kagemusha (1980). Dersu Uzala is truly one of a kind. News, features and opinion on the world of film. Registered charity 287780. Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a unique case of a filmmaker, even for an industry as diverse as the Japanese one, and not just for his additional roles as a film critic and a professor at Tokyo University of Arts. His films, like The Hidden Fortress, influenced popular culture and a generation of young filmmakers. The villagers decide to hire seven wandering samurai to defeat the thugs before they can steal their crops. Over a career of about sixty years, Kurosawa made critically acclaimed masterpieces like Seven Samurai and Rashomon. Set during the civil war of the late-16th-century Warring States period, Kurosawa’s massively influential magnum opus depicts a group of masterless samurai recruited by a farming community to fend off frequent raids by a gang of bandits. Kurosawa had famously extended production costs, along with the timeline Toho Studios had wanted him to adhere to. Akira Kurosawa (1910-98) was the director who first brought international attention to Japanese cinema. Akira Kurosawa is unquestionably the best known Japanese filmmaker in the West. Yukie is the privileged daughter of a Kyoto University law professor who is controversially removed from his post for his leftist beliefs. Based on Arsenyev’s encounters in 1902 with the elderly, gnomic, nature-loving scout from the nomadic Nanai tribe who lends his name to the film (and served as a model for George Lucas’s creation, Yoda), it sees Kurosawa back in epic form as the two wrestle against the ice and snow of the steppes. Following his reappearance on the world stage, Kurosawa returned to the world of jidaigeki epic with two international co-productions, Kagemusha (1980), which George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola persuaded 20th Century Fox to part-finance, and this lavish French-Japanese co-production, which saw him returning to Shakespeare with an adaptation of King Lear. Akira Kurosawa (Japanese: 黒澤明 Kurosawa Akira; March 23, 1910 – September 6, 1998) was a Japanese film director, screenwriter, and producer who directed 30 films in a career spanning 57 years.He is regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. Hugely influenced by the Hollywood films of John Ford, as well as by Shakespeare, he made films about characters and situations that audiences in the West easily recognized. Take a look at any recent historical epic, or indeed the Manichean battle scenes that comprise so much of Peter Jackson’s Tolkien adaptations, and try to imagine how they might look in an alternate universe in which Kurosawa never existed. While the relentless verbal punning in the dialogue is occasionally lost in translation (the title, meaning ‘Not Yet’, alludes to a legend about an old man who refuses to relinquish his hold on life), the discernible self-reflective aspect to this celebration of a life well-lived nevertheless has an undeniable poignancy. Shot in Russia’s Far East on 70mm film, this epic account of an explorer who befriends a hunter won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Set in the 19th century, the story concerns a young doctor (Yuzo Kayama, later a popular musician) who is being trained by an older physician (Mifune), and their various interactions with patients and each other. Refine See titles to watch instantly, titles you haven't rated, etc Instant Watch Options The austere staging and performances, drawing upon traditional Noh theatre, lend an appropriate note of theatricality to proceedings, blurring the gap between the real and the supernatural, while Kurosawa surpasses even himself with the quite jaw-dropping climax as Washizu’s violent misdeeds catch up with him. The first of two films Kurosawa made for the Shochiku studio (alongside the Dostoevsky adaptation The Idiot in 1951), this punchy social drama takes a righteous swipe at the gutter press, as Toshiro Mifune’s up-and-coming painter is snapped by the paparazzi while sitting on a hotel balcony with a famous singer (played by Yoshiko Yamaguchi), the photo inspiring a fabricated story in a popular gossip magazine. The film also lent its name to the Rashomon Effect, which refers to contradictory descriptions of the same events given by different people. The film was released in Japan in 1951, but in the United States only in 1963. The story stars two humorous bumbling peasants who find themselves caught up in a major conflict involving a princess and rival warring factions, which makes you think of how R2-D2 and C-3PO got unwittingly mixed up in an epic battle between good and evil. “Master of horror” is not traditionally an accolade recognised by the world’s leading film competitions, but for Kiyoshi Kurosawa, it’s proved something of a boon. This includes a complete list of films with which he was involved (including the films on which he worked as assistant director before becoming a full director), as well as his little-known contributions to theater, television and literature. Seven Samurai (1954)was Akira Kurosawa at his finest. He's already the subject of a Google doodle, now here's a guide to … Akira Kurosawa, the legendary Japanese director, was born 100 years ago today. 1990s 3; 1980s 2; … This three-hour tale of social inequality and existential angst was the last of the 16 films in which Kurosawa and Mifune worked together. ©2021 British Film Institute. It incorporates numerous elements of Japanese Noh Theatre, which dates back to the 14th century. The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail. The film was widely acclaimed domestically, winning the Blue Ribbon Award, Kinema Junpo Award, and Mainichi Film Award for best film. The film portrays her relationships over the years with two of his former students, both rival for her affections, and her love affair and ensuing marriage to one of them, who is arrested for his anti-government activities and subsequently disappears from public view. The plot revolves around four characters giving different accounts of the same occurrence, leading the audience to question the nature of truth, motivation, interpretation and recollection. Kurosawa’s oeuvre is not particularly regarded for its focus on sympathetic female characters, but the central turn by Setsuko Hara (better known for her work with Yasujiro Ozu) in his fifth feature (and first of the postwar period) showcases another side to the director, and also counts as his most overtly political work. With the financial and critical failure of Dodes’ka-den, a portrait of the grimy denizens of a shantytown on the outskirts of Tokyo, an attempted suicide threatened to put an end to Kurosawa’s career. All 30 Akira Kurosawa Movies Ranked From Worst To Best. … 28. Fortunately an invitation from the Soviet Union’s Mosfilm to helm this Siberia-set 70mm adaptation of explorer Captain Vladimir Arsenyev’s 1923 autobiography put him firmly back on the international map. Needless to say, the outraged artist refuses to take things lying down and vows to take the magazine’s editor to court. Kurosawa was the first Japanese filmmaker whose work I decided to thoroughly explore and because of him I ended up going on a Samurai Cinema quest, which lasted for over 100 films, and that in-turn lead to a Japanese Cinema quest, which led to over 450 films seen and explorations of 40+ other Japanese filmmakers. One of the most beautiful anti-war films ever made, Renoir’s 1937 work is a powerful lamentation aimed at the death of the European aristocracy. Though best known for samurai epics like SEVEN SAMURAI and YOJIMBO, his intimate, contemporary-set dramas, such as IKIRU and HIGH AND LOW, are just as searing. This postwar drama, made during the American occupation of Japan, and therefore subject to strict censorship regulations, marked the first in a long series of collaborations between Kurosawa and the actor Toshiro Mifune. Given extraordinary freedom by Hollywood studio RKO for his debut film, boy wonder Welles created a modernist masterpiece that is regularly voted the best film ever made. This includes a complete list of films with which he was involved (including the films on which he worked as assistant director before becoming a full director), as well as his little-known contributions to theater, television and literature. 3 Best Films of Akira Kurosawa. The film would go on to be the third highest-grossing release in Japan for that year.While firmly entrenching Toshiro Mifune as a sta… It received the year’s Academy Award for best foreign language film. Explore the history of film in list form. With Japan’s studio system increasingly incapable of accommodating the costs of the long shooting periods and large-scale sets and action sequences required for his productions, Kurosawa left his studio Toho after Red Beard (1965). The relatively modest 110-minute runtime makes this (and its shorter 1962 follow-up Sanjuro) a more accessible entry point into Kurosawa’s oeuvre than his more grandiose swords-and-samurai sagas. Released in 1954, the same fateful year as another one of the most well-known Japanese movies — the original Godzilla — Seven Samurai is the Kurosawa film that usually garners the most votes as his best. In 1942, the respected Japanese screenwriter and director Mansaku Itami read a movie script titled A German at Daruma Temple. Through these characters, Kurosawa demonstrates the care and compassion that should be shown to all humans, regardless of social status or wealth. Deemed Kurosawa’s greatest film by Roger Ebert, Ikiru (the Japanese verb for to live) is a devastatingly powerful meditation on one man’s life and his search for meaning. Kurosawa transports Shakespeare’s Macbeth to feudal Japan in this masterly movie, which features a mesmerising performance by Toshiro Mifune. Subscribe now for exclusive offers and the best of cinema. Here Mifune plays a gangster who contracts tuberculosis and develops a bond with the hard-drinking doctor who diagnosed him. Drunken Angel also began a string of collaborations between Kurosawa and composer Fumio Hayasaka, who would later go on to work with Kurosawa’s eminent peer Kenji Mizoguchi. The film that launched Kurosawa’s name outside his homeland (and those of its stars Toshiro Mifune and Machiko Kyo), Rashomon’s Golden Lion Award at Venice in 1951 awakened a postwar generation of international festival and arthouse audiences to the manifold pleasures of Japanese cinema. It worked out. Inspired by several real-life incidents, No Regrets for Our Youth is an intelligent and balanced drama about wavering ideologies and personal allegiances set between 1933-46, the years of imperial Japan’s increasing militarisation through to its wartime defeat. All rights reserved. Together with Godzilla, it’s the seven ronin, or masterless samurai, from this film who adorn a pair of massive murals outside the Toho Studios entrance in Setagaya, Tokyo. We took all of the movies directed by Akira Kurosawa and looked at his Rotten Tomato Critic, Rotten Tomato User, IMDB, and Letterboxd scores, ranking them against one another to see which movies came out on top. BFI Japan 2020: Over 100 Years of Japanese Cinema, Watch No Regrets for Our Youth online on BFI Player, Watch Throne of Blood online on BFI Player. This in itself is reflected in the ease by which they’ve in turn established an action template so readily adapted by filmmakers from all over the world. Hand-picked. a list of 30 titles The Best 20 Films of the Noughties (2000-2009). There is nothing subpar within this large and varied body of work, and I’ve omitted many a worthy title in the aim of giving a fuller picture of the fruits of an incredible six-decade filmmaking career. The most celebrated Japanese filmmaker of all time, Akira Kurosawa produced a staggering body of work that stands as a monument of artistic achievement. Kagemusha is one of Kurosawa’s most historically interesting films, for a number of reasons. Here are 10 of his best movies. First of all, it emerged through what might’ve been the single most frustrating shoot of the director’s career. It's one of the most unique stories ever in cinema; it also contributed much to action movies and film techniques including the masterful use of rain during an epic battle or action sequence among many others. Yojimbo (1961) Although the majority of Kurosawa’s films were contemporary dramas, he tends to be best known for his samurai works. Akira Kurosawa is an influential director. This action-filled adventure film is credited as a major inspiration for the original Star Wars films. Very loosely inspired by Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Ikiru is one of Kurosawa’s most emotionally resonant films, one that leads the audience to contemplate life and legacy in a very subtle and poignant manner. With a running time of over 200 minutes, Kurosawa’s first samurai film is a quintessential action film, and it exerted enormous influence on both Japanese cinema and Hollywood, most notably in the 1960 Western remake The Magnificent Seven. Akira Kurosawa's 100 Favorite Movies Before his death in 1998, famed Japanese director, Akira Kurosawa discussed his top 100 films with his daughter, Kazuo. Here is a list of the best films of his career. The film is best remembered for the striking scene in which Mifune’s character, Macbeth’s equivalent, meets his death in a hail of arrows. 12:49:00 AM akira kurosawa , best movies list , biography , japan Edit J apanese auteur Akira Kurosawa is widely regarded as one of the greatest moviemakers of all time. BFI Japan 2020: Over 100 Years of Japanese Cinema is a major celebration of Japanese cinema beginning on BFI Player. The Top 20 Movies Directed by Akira Kurosawa; The Best Horror Movies Of the 1980s; The Best Science Fiction Movies of 1977; The Best Comedy Movies Of the 2000s; The Most Recently Released Movies; The Most Recently Added Movies; Movies by Decade from this Chart. Devoid of the elaborate action sequences and intense inner dramas for which he is renowned, and featuring a whimsical mid-section involving a missing cat that lasts almost half an hour, Kurosawa’s directorial swansong initially seems slightly underwhelming. Yojimbo may well be Kurosawa’s most influential work, and it certainly is among his best. The first serious phase of the director’s career came during the postwar era … The costume designer deservedly won an Oscar. During the final days of World War II, production funds for Japanese films were at a bare minimum. Japanese horror movies got a big leg-up in the 1950s and 1960s with Ugetsu and Kwaidan , before spinning heads over time with transgressive cult works ( Tetsuo: The Ironman ), comedic takes ( Hausu , One Cut of the Dead ), and crossover hits ( … This blending of Eastern and Western traditions is thrilling to behold. Without further ado, here are Akira Kurosawa's 5 Best Films (& 5 Worst). The main character of Ikiru (which means ‘to live’), played by the long-standing Kurosawa mainstay Takashi Shimura, is a terminally ill bureaucrat who attempts to find a meaning and purpose to life before he passes away. Combining two short stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, its script also broke the mould of conventional cinema plotting, introducing the concept of the unreliable narrator in its contradictory accounts of the rape of a samurai’s wife as relayed by the key suspects and witnesses to the crime, including one testimony delivered from the murdered samurai himself by a medium. A ranking of all thirty films directed by Akira Kurosawa, presented in order of best to worst. The most expensive Japanese production of its day, it introduced all the hallmarks associated with Kurosawa’s name: an epic runtime detailing the recruitment of the mercenary force, the training of the farmers, and the fortification of the village in anticipation of the climactic attack (the original western release was trimmed down from the original 207 minutes); on-location shooting with a strong focus on landscapes and environmental conditions to reflect the inner psychologies of the human elements within them; a fastidious recreation of sets, costumes and weaponry of the era; and lots and lots of stunning horse-bound battle sequences shot using multiple camera setups. This is all the more impressive when one considers that Kurosawa was 75 years old during the making of the film. He is still considered to be one of the greatest Japanese filmmakers in history and he is beloved worldwide. Kurosawa directed this masterpiece at the lowest point of his career in Japan, a situation that was mainly down to the commercial failure of his previous film, Dodesukaden, which was completed a full five years before Dersu Uzala. Taken as pure entertainment, High and Low ranks among the very best films Kurosawa ever made thanks to the constant tension, corporate intrigue, and unpredictable plot developments. Menu. Kurosawa limited himself to one title per director, giving a unique perspective on the best world directors and his personal favorites. The following is a list of works, both in film and other media, for which the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa made some documented creative contribution. A portrait of the academic and author Hyakken Uchida (1889–1971), unfolding across the decades following Uchida’s retirement just prior to the beginning of Second World War, much of its runtime is given over to the good cheer accompanying the riotous annual drinking parties held every year to mark his birthday by the former students who venerate him. A lesser-known work from the master, Scandal is nonetheless worth checking out not only as an example of Kurosawa’s technical virtuosity and strong compositional approach, but for its critique of some of the less palatable aspects of westernisation. Kurosawa fans most likely expected this film to be at the top. The final sequence is as fitting a coda to the astounding career of this legendary filmmaker as one could ever wish for. The Best Japanese Horror Movies From folk tales to body horror to monster movies, Japan’s cinema finds new ways to thrill and disturb audiences. The masterful atmospheric cinematography of Kazuo Miyagawa, and the late-10th-century Heian period setting adds to the haunting, purgatorial ambience. Posted on February 20, 2020 February 20, 2020 by Patrick Galvan. Seven Samurai: The rocky road to classic status of Akira Kurosawa’s action masterpiece, Down the Bunka: Japanese underground cinema of the 1960s, Top trumps: the giants of Japan’s monster movies, Born: 23 March 1910, Omori, TokyoDied: 6 September 1998, Tokyo. 0. Akira Kurosawa (23 March 1910 — 6 September 1998) is one of Japanese cinema’s few household names in the west, due to such groundbreaking jidaigeki period action films as Seven Samurai (1954), The Hidden Fortress (1958) and Kagemusha (1980). Kane and Vertigo don’t top the chart by divine right. Kurosawa undoubtedly played a pivotal role in the emergence of cinema as the predominant art form of the 20th century. Despite his age, the production exudes a freshness and vitality unlike anything he had made before, offering a feast for the eyes. Although the script uses not a single line from its source, Kurosawa’s celebrated transplantation of Macbeth to the lawless realm of 16th-century Japan counts among the finest screen adaptations of Shakespeare ever realised, a faithful rendition of the story that works perfectly within its own historical context. Partly inspired by George Stevens’s Shane (1952), Kurosawa’s quintessential ‘samurai/western’ Yojimbo (‘The Bodyguard’) thrives on this cross-cultural synergy, right down to the soundtrack. Kurosawa’s most famous film concerns a village under attack from a group of bandits. Along with Tarkovsky, I consider Kurosawa the greatest of all filmmakers. Much like Throne of Blood, it takes Shakespeare to medieval Japan in spectacularly extravagant fashion. Aside from the independently produced Dodes’ka-den in 1970 (remarkably, his first film in colour), he would not direct another film in his homeland for 15 years. Skilfully invoking memorable imagery of disintegrating ideals, The Grand Illusion is a tragicomic exposition of the futility of extensive warfare. Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura is wonderful as the man who only finds meaning in his life as death rears its ugly head, while his in-laws wrangle over his pension pot. June 30, 2020. Winner of the best director award at the Venice Film Festival 2020 for his period espionage drama Wife of a Spy, Kurosawa was known initially as a proponent of the horror genre, his first films coinciding with the turn of the millennium wave of J-horror. The following is a list of works, both in film and other media, for which the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa made some documented creative contribution. His inability to secure funds for another film in Japan prompted this overseas shift, and the result is a magical tapestry of a world seldom seen by outsiders. His absent presence in the final sections provides a more down-to-earth mirror inverse to Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Akira Kurosawa redefined the action film with his samurai epics set in Japan’s medieval past. “What are Akira Kurosawa’s Best Movies?” We looked at all of Kurosawa’s directed filmography and ranked them against one another to answer that very question! How many have you seen? 10 Worst: The Idiot (1951) The Idiot is an adaptation of a Russian novel of the same name by Fyodor Dostoevsky. We and our partners use cookies to better understand your needs, improve performance and provide you with personalised content and advertisements. The enduring popularity of such titles lies in no small part to their open influence from Hollywood, particularly the westerns of directors such as John Ford. Based on Shakespeare’s King Lear, Ran was the most complex and expensive film of Kurosawa’s career. With 30 titles to his name as a director since his 1943 debut Sanshiro Sugata (and many more as a screenwriter), distilling Kurosawa’s must-see titles into a tidy top 10 list is something of a fools errand. Ironically, that foreign language was Russian, and the country Kurosawa was representing was the Soviet Union. The Top 20 Movies Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa; The Best Horror Movies Of the 1980s; The Best Science Fiction Movies of 1977; The Best Comedy Movies Of the 2000s; The Most Recently Released Movies; The Most Recently Added Movies; Movies by Decade … ... Best Films of 2010! The following is a list of works, both in film and other media, for which the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa made some documented creative contribution. 248. Kurosawa would explore this line – between good and bad – in many of his films: Kagemusha (1980), in which a thief, acting as the double for a feudal lord, slowly assumes the characteristics of his master, is one example; contemporary crime dramas Stray Dog (1949), about a policeman searching for his stolen pistol, and High and Low (1963), about an investigation into a … A stylistic similarity between the two films is the way in which Kurosawa transitions from one shot to the next using a wipe, something that George Lucas would emulate a little under two decades later. To allow us to provide a better and more tailored experience please click "OK", The Idiot (1951) | © japanesefilmarchive/Flickr. Its title translates literally as ‘Spider’s Web Castle’, and the gothic setting of a deserted castle filled with dark shadows and swathed in fog forms the perfect frame for Mifune’s tortured turn as Washizu, the samurai usurper haunted by past crimes. Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936, following a brief stint as a painter. While certainly not the first samurai story committed to film, Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai nonetheless set a standard, pretty much from the moment it was released. The film is best remembered for the striking scene in which Mifune’s character, Macbeth’s equivalent, meets his death in a hail of arrows. Rashomon is the film that marked the beginning of Kurosawa’s international fame, as well as serving as an introduction to Japanese film for a foreign audience after it won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and an honorary Oscar in 1951 and 1952 respectively. Kurosawa transports Shakespeare’s Macbeth to feudal Japan in this masterly movie, which features a mesmerising performance by Toshiro Mifune. Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa is often regarded as one of the best and most influential directors in the history of cinema. 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( & 5 Worst ) language was Russian, and the late-10th-century Heian period setting adds to 14th... Or wealth he is beloved worldwide say, the respected Japanese screenwriter and director Mansaku Itami a.
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