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Akira Kurosawa

 

TSPDT Rating
Director / Screenwriter / Editor / Producer
1910 - 1998 
Born March 23, Omori, Tokyo, Japan
Key Production Country: Japan 
Key Genres: Drama, Samurai Film, Period Film, Psychological Drama, Medical Drama, Ensemble Film, Family Drama, Urban Drama
Key Collaborators: Yoshiro Muraki (Production Designer), Toshiro Mifune (Leading Player), Takashi Shimura (Leading Character Player), Hideo Oguni (Screenwriter), Minoru Chiaki (Leading Character Player), Shinobu Hashimoto (Screenwriter), Asakazu Nakai (Cinematographer), Takao Saito (Cinematographer), Masaru Sato (Composer), Kamatari Fujiwara (Character Player)
Highly Recommended: Rashomon (1950), Ikiru (1952), The Seven Samurai (1954), Ran (1985)
Recommended: Stray Dog (1949), Throne of Blood (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958), High and Low (1963), Dodes'ka-den (1970)
Worth a Look: Drunken Angel (1948), The Idiot (1951), I Live in Fear (1955), The Lower Depths (1957), Yojimbo (1961), Red Beard (1965), Dersu Uzala (1975), Kagemusha (1980), Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (1990), Rhapsody in August (1990), Madadayo (1993)
Links: [ IMDB ] [ All-Movie Guide ] [ Senses of Cinema: Great Directors ] [ Film Reference ] [ Wikipedia ] [ BFI Feature ] [ Zhang Yimou Article on Kurosawa ] [ Chris Fujiwara Article ] [ Pop Matters Feature ] [ PBS Feature ] [ Strictly Film School ] [ Time Asia Tribute (2006) ] [ Books and Writers Biography ] [ AkiraKurosawa.com ] [ Kurosawa and the Spaghetti Western ]
Books: [ Something Like an Autobiography ] [ The Films of Akira Kurosawa ] [ Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema ] [ Waiting on the Weather: Making Movies with Akira Kurosawa ] [ The Warriors' Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa ] [ The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune ] [ Akira Kurosawa: Interviews ]
DVD's: [ Amazon ]
1,000 Greatest Films: Stray Dog (1949), Rashomon (1950), Ikiru (1952), The Seven Samurai (1954), The Hidden Fortress (1958), Yojimbo (1961), High and Low (1962), Red Beard (1965), Dodes'ka-den (1970), Dersu Uzala (1975), Kagemusha (1980), Ran (1985)
 
Rashomon (1950)Ikiru (1952)The Seven Samurai (1954)Ran (1985)
 
     
  "If in the more deliberately humanist dramas his sentimentality seems sometimes contrived and maudlin, his feel for action and his concern for historical authenticity reveal a talent that both delights in and transcends genre limitations. Certainly, his best work merges psychological precision, narrative subtlety and visual bravura to extraordinary effect." - Geoff Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989)  
     
  "Like his counterparts and most admired models, Jean Renoir, John Ford, and Kenji Mizoguchi, Kurosawa has taken his cinematic inspirations from the full store of world film, literature, and music. And yet the completely original screenplays of his two greatest films, Ikiru and Seven Samurai, reveal that his natural story-telling ability and humanistic convictions transcend all limitations of genre, period and nationality." - Audie Bock (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1991)  
     
  "The current awareness of Japanese cinema in the West began with Kurosawa, even if he has now been surpassed...Despite his appetite for disparate subjects in the 1950s, his period films look insubstantial against Mizoguchi's, just as Rashomon's debate on truth is trite beside Ugetsu. As to the contemporary Japanese experience, Kurosawa now trails behind a new generation." - David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)  
     
  "The term 'giant' is used too often to describe artists. But in the case of Akira Kurosawa, we have one of the rare instances where the term fits." - Martin Scorsese  
     
  "A great director of wit, irony, and passion, Kurosawa has lensed some of the greatest Japanese films." - William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)  
     
  "Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied... That's why they can keep on working. I've been able to work for so long because I think next time, I'll make something good." - Akira Kurosawa  
     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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