The Best American Poetry

XIX. The 30 Films of Akira Kurosawa: Rashômon (In the Woods) [1950] (by Lewis Saul)

Ed note:  For the next several weeks, composer and film aficionado Lewis Saul has agreed to supply us with in-depth commentary about the films of Akira Kurosawa, now showing in an extended festival at the Film Forum. Even if you're unable to stop by the Forum, we think Lew's insights will deepen your appreciation of these important movies.

Rashômon (In the Woods) [1950]

PLAYING on January 28th at The Film Forum

This is Kurosawa's 11th film.

You lucky New Yorkers will see a brand new 35mm restored print! How I envy you! Go see this film today!

This précis is probably unnecessary, so universally known is this story -- but I include it here so as to make the actors who play these memorable characters more familiar to you:

In the 11th century, a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura -- 21 roles for Kurosawa in his 30 films!*) and a priest (Minoru Chiaki) wait out a heavy rainstorm under the collapsing Rashômon gate. A commoner (Kichijirô Ueda) joins them and the woodcutter tells his story about a samurai (Masayuki Mori), his wife (Machiko Kyô, her only AK role) and a bandit (Mifune). They all testified in court, and in addition, a medium (Noriko [Fumiko] Homma) testified on behalf of the dead samurai. Throw an abandoned newborn infant into the mix at the finish, as Kurosawa appends a sharp moral uplift.

The profound influence that this film had on future cinema is impossible to overstate. In 1950, no one had ever seen anything like it! Galbraith points out three films which later attempted to mimic the structure of Kurosawa's masterpiece: Kubrick's The Killing [1956]; Alain Resnais' L'année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad) [1961]; and Mario Bava's Quante volte ... quella notte (Four Times that Night) [1972] [p. 129].

XVIII. The 30 Films of Akira Kurosawa: Kagemusha (The Double/Shadow Warrior) [1980] (by Lewis Saul)

Ed note:  For the next several weeks, composer and film aficionado Lewis Saul has agreed to supply us with in-depth commentary about the films of Akira Kurosawa, now showing in an extended festival at the Film Forum. Even if you're unable to stop by the Forum, we think Lew's insights will deepen your appreciation of these important movies.

Kagemusha (The Double/Shadow Warrior) [1980]

PLAYING January 27th at The Film Forum

This is Kurosawa's 26th film, but only his third color film!

It is easy to remember the years that the six films #23-28 were made: starting in 1965 (#23), we get a new film exactly every five years ... so 1970 (#24); 1975 (#25); 1980 (#26); 1985 (#27); 1990 (#28) ...

I'm fairly certain Kurosawa would have been happier if he had been able to make a film or two in between those big Five Year Plans!

However, things with the Japanese film industry were so bad at this time that Kurosawa's previous film had been shot and partially financed in the (former) Soviet Union. So after wrapping Dersu Uzala (playing February 4th) in 1975, Kurosawa had plenty of time on his hands to create a new film -- entirely in his own imagination! He created nearly 250 paintings and sketches of the scenes and characters. Finally, he showed them to George Lucas who was stunned to learn of Kurosawa's financing problems.

"It was a tragedy. It was like telling Michelangelo, 'All right, you're seventy and we're not letting you paint anymore.'"

Now, recall -- it's 1980 and a certain Lucas film has done pretty well at box office! Thus, he was able to pretty much blackmail 20th Century into coming up with the remaining money and shaming Toho into co-financing the film. (Francis Ford Coppola got in on the act as well.) And so,

" ... for the first time in history, an American studio was pressured into buying a film it didn't especially want, to engineer another company into pouring money into a film it did not want to make" [Galbraith, p. 547-8].

XVII. The 30 Films of Akira Kurosawa: Waruiyatsu hodo yoku nemeru (The Bad Sleep Well) [1960] (by Lewis Saul)

Ed note:  For the next several weeks, composer and film aficionado Lewis Saul has agreed to supply us with in-depth commentary about the films of Akira Kurosawa, now showing in an extended festival at the Film Forum. Even if you're unable to stop by the Forum, we think Lew's insights will deepen your appreciation of these important movies.

Warui yatsu hodo yoku nemuru (The Bad Sleep Well) [1960]

PLAYING on January 26th at The Film Forum

This is Kurosawa's 19th film and the first co-production between his new production company and Toho.

From my reading, it has always seemed that the reason Toho was anxious to have Kurosawa foot the bill for the expensive costs of his films -- and therefore take risks he had never been forced to take previously -- was that he often seemed to choose themes for his films which did not seem "commercial" at first glance. If his next film Yojimbo [1961] {playing February 3rd} had been his 19th film instead of his 20th, I would have thought that this was exactly the case -- Yojimbo seems hand-crafted with an eye towards making a bit hit!

But instead he made this film. A powerful, unflinching (although some still accuse Kurosawa of flinching, in the end [see below]) look at corporate Japan at the beginning of the big economic boom, and the gangsters in suits who ran/run the corporations ...

The Shakespearean connection here (Hamlet) would seem to be the most tenuous of the three (MacBeth/Throne of Blood and Ran/King Lear are the other two) -- and you can read many pages in Goodwin about it -- I'll leave that to you experts. I'm just a dumb musician.

Galbraith's chapter on this film is filled with terrific anecdotes, perhaps because of his relationship with Mike Inoue, Kurosawa's nephew, who had a lot to do with the origins of this very interesting movie:

"When I went to college I wanted to be a scriptwriter. I wrote a script and gave it to my uncle to read. Of course, he received scripts from all over. I wrote my name on the script, and every time I went to see him the script was always under a big pile, and each time I would move it to the top of the stack. One day I went to his birthday party and his wife rushed out to meet me at the front door and said, 'You'll be very happy to know your uncle had nothing to do while he was waiting for the guests to arrive, and he started reading your script.'" After some encouragement and six months more work, Inoue presented his uncle with a script entitled, "Bad Men's Prosperity." "[Kursoawa said], 'The story is very interesting. I might take up the subject for a film, but I'd have to refine the script you wrote. You don't mind, do you?'"

Inoue received no screen credit, but he didn't seem to mind. "Some of the scenes I spent ten pages on he replaced with only one line. I had many sleepless nights writing those scenes, but I have to admit their version was much better, and it wasn't my script anymore."

XV. The 30 Films of Akira Kurosawa: Ichiban utsukushiku (The Most Beautiful) [1944] (by Lewis Saul)

Ed note:  For the next several weeks, composer and film aficionado Lewis Saul has agreed to supply us with in-depth commentary about the films of Akira Kurosawa, now showing in an extended festival at the Film Forum. Even if you're unable to stop by the Forum, we think Lew's insights will deepen your appreciation of these important movies.

Ichiban utsukushiku (The Most Beautiful [1944]

PLAYING January 25th at The Film Forum

This is Kurosawa's second film.

For a detailed frame-by-frame analysis, click here.

I am insanely jealous of you New Yorkers. You will find your seat, the lights will dim ~ and you'll see one of the very worst Kurosawa films he ever made!

No, but I'm really not kidding. I really am jealous! You see, although I think we can all just go ahead and admit that this is not exactly a masterpiece, it does have some moments where you will say to yourself, "gee, I notice that he does that a lot in his later films!"

It is of course, his most obvious "propaganda film" of his four war-time pictures ... but that hardly detracts from enjoying the movie on its own merits. There are several, of course...

I still haven't told you why I'm so jealous of you! When you sit down to watch this film, you will be looking at a new set of subtitles, which are only available to your humble blogger if I shell out $300 for the set pictured above! (Hopefully, they will release this title separately at some point!)

The subtitles which you can see on the transcription at my blog are pretty much unreadable. So enjoy the new ones.

An example of the English translation from the Japanese by the Hong-Kong-based Chinese who did the translation!

Another great example:

"You are healthy. The diseases are scared of you." Laughter. "My bones are vulnerable."

• There are 18 wipes in this film: six horizontal (4l/2r); 11 vertical (10t-b/1b-t); and one very beautiful "iris" wipe!

XII. The 30 Films of Akira Kurosawa: Yoidore Tenshi (Drunken Angel) [1948] (by Lewis Saul)

Ed note:  For the next several weeks, composer and film aficionado Lewis Saul has agreed to supply us with in-depth commentary about the films of Akira Kurosawa, now showing in an extended festival at the Film Forum. Even if you're unable to stop by the Forum, we think Lew's insights will deepen your appreciation of these important movies.

Yoidore tenshi (Drunken Angel) [1948]

PLAYING January 23rd at The Film Forum

This is Kurosawa's seventh film.

For a detailed frame-by-frame analysis of this film, click here.

That's pretty detailed, so I won't have a whole lot more to say here -- I'm hoping you'll go there to check it all out...

I like to make up little images with quotes from the films that I've analyzed on my blog. This is the image I made for this film:
Dr. Sanada (Takashi Shimura)'s cynical words seems quite appropriate for this extremely cynical film about life during the Occupation.

I enjoy telling the story about my history with seeing this film:

The first print I ever saw was on a VHS I got from Hollywood Attic where the subtitles were in shaky white type which completely disappeared when anything light-colored appeared on the screen! It was almost impossible to sit through. Then, Home Vision came out with a VHS that had the same terrible print, but slightly better subtitles; and then finally -- Criterion to the rescue! It's like watching it in the theater now.

• There are 12 wipes in this film; eight horizontal (seven left and one right); one vertical (top to bottom) and three diagonal wipes (one top right to bottom left and two top left to bottom right)

XI. The 30 Films of Akira Kurosawa: Tengoku to jigoku (High and Low) [1963] (by Lewis Saul)

Ed note:  For the next several weeks, composer and film aficionado Lewis Saul has agreed to supply us with in-depth commentary about the films of Akira Kurosawa, now showing in an extended festival at the Film Forum. Even if you're unable to stop by the Forum, we think Lew's insights will deepen your appreciation of these important movies.

Tengoku to jigoku (High and Low) [1963]

PLAYING January 22nd at The Film Forum

This is Kurosawa's 22nd film. (Hey, neat: his 22nd playing on the 22nd!) ...

Based on King's Ransom by Ed McBain (except for the ending), Kurosawa transplanted the story to the Yokohama home of wealthy Kingo Gondo (Mifune), an executive director and production head who runs the factory of National Shoes. Gondo meets with three company executives (Kamiya, Director of Marketing [Jun Tazaki]; Ishimaru, Director of Design [Nobuo Nakamura] and Baba, Director of Sales and Operations [Yûnosuke Itô]). They ask Gondo to join them in ousting the company's president, whose shoes and leadership are increasingly old-fashioned. They propose a new line of shoes much cheaper to produce and therefore more profitable. Gondo, who has spent most of his life at the company, is outraged by the shoddiness of the product they show him. As Gondo's assistant, Kawanishi (Tatsuya Mihashi), looks on, Gondo refuses to go along with the scheme, chastising the executives for their lack of integrity. Gondo throws them out, surprising Reiko (Kyoko Kagawa, five films with AK, all important roles), his wife. [Galbraith, p. 342]

And oh my, it just gets better and better from there! Galbraith's synopsis runs until p. 346, so there is definitely a lot to describe. However ...

X. The 30 Films of Akira Kurosawa: Ikimono no kiroku (I Live in Fear/Record of a Living Being) [1955] (by Lewis Saul)]

Ed note:  For the next several weeks, composer and film aficionado Lewis Saul has agreed to supply us with in-depth commentary about the films of Akira Kurosawa, now showing in an extended festival at the Film Forum. Even if you're unable to stop by the Forum, we think Lew's insights will deepen your appreciation of these important movies.

Ikimono no kiroku (I Live in Fear/Record of a Living Being) [1955]

PLAYING January 21st at The Film Forum

This is Kurosawa's 15th film.

Some background, courtesy of Galbraith:

"In the Japan of 1955, the specter of nuclear terror was ever-present. The Korean War renewed fears of nuclear attack, the Rosenbergs were in the news, and, just ten years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- during which nearly 300,000 Japanese were killed -- the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain were regularly conducting nuclear tests in the Pacific. These tests begat radioactive rainstorms in Japan and subtly affected weather conditions all over the Northern Hemisphere. The hydrogen bombs developed in 1952 were 750 times more powerful than those dropped in 1945, and one such test, dubbed "Operation Bravo," (LS: actually "Castle Bravo") would turn Japan upside down.

On March 1, 1954, a hydrogen bomb was exploded by the American military near the Bikini Atoll. The bomb's power was much greater than expected, sending radioactive clouds drifting over a 7,000-square-mile area of ocean. Wanderining into this deadly cloud was a Japanese fishing boat, the Lucky Dragon No. 5 (Dai-go fukuryu maru). The twenty-three men aboard were soon covered in radioactive ash and developed nausea, headaches, and discolored skin. Two weeks later, news reports of this disaster began to leak out, triggering a nationwide recall of tuna. Ironically, the day after the Lucky Dragon incident, the Japanese government approved funding for the development of its very first nuclear reactor, and the number of nuclear tests conducted by the United States tripled in 1955 to eighteen from the previous year's six. A grass-roots protest against nuclear testing began in Japan, and by the time Record of a Living Being was released in November 1955, more than 32 million signatures had been collected." [p. 215]

Nakajima (Mifune) is a moderately wealthy factory owner. His family has petitioned the court to have him declared mentally unsound, because the seventy-year-old man (Mifune was 35!) lives in fear of the bomb and is attempting to use his considerable assets to move the family to Brazil, where he believes air currents will protect him in the event of a nuclear war. (There was much emigration to Brazil at the time and, concurrently, the widely held misconception that South America would somehow be spared any deadly fallout from such a conflict.) Most of the family, including the families of his former and present mistress, will have none of it: they have no interest in leaving Japan and don't want to see the family fortune drained by this seemingly mad scheme.

II. The 30 Films of Akira Kurosawa: Kumonosu jo (Throne of Blood) [1957] (by Lewis Saul)

Ed note:  For the next several weeks, composer and film aficionado Lewis Saul has agreed to supply us with in-depth commentary about the films of Akira Kurosawa, now showing in an extended festival at the Film Forum. Even if you're unable to stop by the Forum, we think Lew's insights will deepen your appreciation of these important movies.

Kumonosu jo
Throne of Blood
1957

PLAYING January 15th at The Film Forum
209 W Houston St, New York, NY 10014
Box Office: (212) 727-8110

This is Kurosawa's 16th film, the start of the Second Half of the ak oeuvre (30 films) ... more a completely new and unique filmic re-imagining than any sort of mere adaptation, the source material is a play written a few centuries ago by a guy named Bill Shakespeare -- Macbeth ... Kurosawa is in his top masterful form here, coming off a critical flop -- Ikimono no kiroku (I Live in Fear/Record of a Living Being) [1955] (playing at the Film Forum on January 21st), which was preceded by his greatest success, Shichinin no samurai (The Seven Samurai) [1954] (playing on January 29th and 30th).

Minoru Chiaki (the "woodcutting samurai" in Seven Samurai) finally gets his own starring role opposite Mifune! (He would get just one more -- 1958's Kakushi toride no san akunin (The Hidden Fortress), playing on January 16th) ...

This is a dark film, and Asakazu Nakai's B&W photography is stunning ... Only wipes and cuts are used in this film -- no fades or dissolves; nothing soft!

Sadly, Stuart Galbraith IV's masterpiece, The Emperor and the Wolf is now out of print.

I cannot do better than his vivid description of the plot in one brief paragraph. In any case, the entire proceedings may seem familiar to you if you have read the original play!

"Washizu (Mifune) and fellow warrior Miki (Chiaki, who appeared in a total of 10 AK films), having won a fierce battle, are on their way back to their lord's castle when they encounter a witch (Chieko Naniwa), who predicts that Washizu will assume control of the castle but that Miki's son (Akira Kubo) will subsequently rule. When they return to the castle, another of the witch's predictions comes true. Washizu tells his wife, Lady Asaji (Isuzu Yamada) about the predictions, and she goads him into killing the lord (Takamaru Sasaki) when he visits Washizu's mansion. When Lady Asaji becomes pregnant, Washizu sends an assassin after Miki and his son, but the latter survives. Washizu is haunted by Miki's ghost. When Asaji's baby is still born, she goes mad. Washizu visits the witch again; she tells him he will never lose a battle until the Cobweb Forest (Birnam Wood) comes to the castle. The prophecy is fulfilled when forces loyal to the murdered lord advance on the castle, hidden behind cut tree branches and shrubbery. Washizu's own troops, by now aware that their master engineered the lord's murder, turn on him and shoot him full of arrows." [p. 232]

***

A few things to think about:

1. The entire story is told in flashback! Although not technically a dissolve, observe how Kurosawa uses the fog as it covers the stake which marks the spot where the castle once stood ... a kind of cinematic dissolve which consumes the marker and transports us back to medieval Japan!
2. The castle set was built on the slopes of Mt. Fuji.
3. The shoot itself sounds like it must have been a grueling experience: location work began on June 29, 1956 and took up the entire summer and early fall. A month or two of post-production (if you think that's fast, just imagine: Yojimbo [1961] [playing on February 3rd] had only four days of pp before the film's premiere!), and the film opened on January 15, 1957.
4. Takeshi Katô, who appeared in mostly miniscule roles in six AK films, is here required to get stabbed by Mifune with a sword and then die. Here's Katô-san, quoted in Galbraith: "It was summertime at the open set, I was hot, the lighting was hot, and bugs were swarming all over me, but I couldn't move until I was killed. I worked for about a week. I kept hoping Mr. Mifune would kill me as soon as possible ... Three cameras shot Mifune coming at me with the sword. I put a piece of wood up my sleeve for safety when he stabbed me. However, he was so quick and powerful that he broke right through the wood and really stabbed me! It was so painful. I was not acting in that scene and I still have a scar under my arm." [p. 234]
5. Mifune also complained about Kurosawa's abuse of his actors: "Those were real arrows and that's real fear in my eyes. I'm not really acting at all. And until I stopped him, Kurosawa wanted to use a bunch of amateur archers ... just extras ... to shoot the arrows!" [p. 235]
6. See if you can spot the almost constant use of telephoto lens at this point in Kurosawa's output -- particularly in the scenes where they are riding around in the fog!
7. Washizu's breakdown at dinner when Miki doesn't show up is splendid. Kurosawa breaks up the scene with a series of axial cuts and bizarre camera angles.
8. Be prepared to concentrate on the subtitles when the warriors are discussing "First Castle [or fort]," "Second Castle," and "Third Castle" -- it can get confusing!
9. The Criterion DVD is fantastic, with -- count 'em -- TWO separate sets of subtitles; one by Richie and one by Hoagland. This is very cool with a jidai-geki like this, because the language would be like Shakespeare to contemporary ears. Excellent! (I'm curious which one is used in this particular print.)
10. Check out the swishing sound made by Lady Asaji's robes...
11. And finally: there are 19 wipes in this film, all horizontal (nine to the left and 10 to the right).

I. The 30 Films of Akira Kurosawa: Nora inu (Stray Dog) [1949] (by Lewis Saul)

Ed note:  For the next several weeks, composer and film aficionado Lewis Saul has agreed to supply us with in-depth commentary about the films of Akira Kurosawa, now showing in an extended festival at the Film Forum. Even if you're unable to stop by the Forum, we think Lew's insights will deepen your appreciation of these important movies.

Nora inu Stray Dog [1949]

PLAYED (January 6th through 14th).

This is Kurosawa's ninth film. (The IMDb lists Asu o tsukuru hitobito (Those Who Make Tomorrow) [1946] as "directed by" Akira Kurosawa, but this does not really count as one of his films. First of all, Kurosawa has disowned the piece in no uncertain terms. It was made under SCAP (Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers) pressure; McArthur had initially felt that unionization was needed, and thus weird films like this were being produced during the early days of the Occupation. Made with two other directors (Hideo Sekigawa and Kajirô Yamamoto [Kurosawa's mentor]), it is about the real-life craziness of such efforts to unionize the film industry. It is not available in any form to my knowledge, and even the great Kurosawa scholar, Donald Richie, has never seen it!

For a detailed, frame-by-frame analysis of this film, click here.

It might be worthwhile to take a brief look at the many different ways one can examine the mighty canon of this great master filmmaker.

For example, most Japanese film scholars break down its national cinema into two basic formulas: the "jidai-geki," or period film and the "gendai-mono," or modern drama.

Between 1943 and 1993, Kurosawa made 17 "gendai-mono" films and 13 "jidai-geki" ones.

Another view:

Four pre-Occupation (type: 1 gendai-mono, 3 jidai-geki); nine Occupation (8 and 1; almost all of these films deal with contemporary social issues, naturally enough); and 17 post-Occupation (8 and 9 -- pretty even!) ...

Like his hero, John Ford, who created his own little repertory company (with John Wayne playing the director's alter-ego in approximately 11 or so films), Kurosawa used the two greatest Japanese actors of the 20th century, who are forever associated with him: Takashi Shimura, who appears in an amazing 21 of the 30 films, and of course, Toshirô Mifune who is in 16.