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Cory Fields

Darrell Riffe

Advanced Studies in Film

February 24, 2018

Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa has played a pivotal role in how modern films and movies are produced.

He has captivated generations of viewers and has had his work be stolen and adapted to make a

quick buck. Let's start at the beginning and see what made Kurosawa into the filmmaker he was.

Heigo was Kurosawa's gateway into western culture and more specifically the arts. He is

the reason that Kurosawa grew to love Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Maksim Gorky. According to an

actor who knew both of them "You are exactly like your brother, only he's the negative, and

you're the positive print." According to Kurosawa, himself, his elder brother was the most

significant influence in his life, without him, Kurosawa may have never become a filmmaker.

For a short time, Kurosawa was a painter. He studied under his father and was trained in

both western painting and kendo. His favorite artists were Van Gogh and Gauguin, he loved their

dense, layered brushstrokes and sensitivities, these qualities can be seen in many of his works in

the actor's emotions, and the seasons his films were set in.

In 1935 he would begin to transition from painting to cinema. A new film studio called

Photo Chemical Laboratories, P.C.L. for short, advertised for assistant directors, although

Kurosawa up until this point had no interest in filmmaking he submitted an essay anyway. Kajirō

Yamamoto took a liking to Kurosawa and conducted multiple follow-up exams and even

convinced the studio to hire Kurosawa.

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Kurosawa worked as an assistant director for five years under many different directors he

helped create 24 different films of which 17 were under Kajirō Yamamoto. In just one year he

went from third assistant director to chief assistant director. During his time working under

Yamamoto work on almost every aspect of the filmmaking process such as stage construction,

script polishing, rehearsals, lighting, dubbing, and editing. His final film as an assistant director

was Horse in 1941 of which he almost directed in its entirety due to Yamamoto working on

another film. The longest lasting and most important advice Yamamoto graced Kurosawa with

was that a good director needed to master screenwriting. Advise he followed, almost every

movie he directed was written by him.

During WWII and the US occupation that followed his films were trimmed extensively

because they were either to western or to feudal. During this time he also found his wife Yōko

Yaguchi, who was an actor at the time.

One of the films we watched in class Ugetsu, 1953, was revered by Kurosawa as

captivating a generation of young filmmakers. The movie follows two families who which all

have different wants in life. One wishes to be a samurai; another wants his wife to have beautiful

clothes, while their wives want them to stay home and live a quiet life. Both of the husbands end

up making their families' lives worse. This film teaches that success brings suffering also that

greed is bad and money doesn't equal happiness. Another theme is one thing leads the another

one of the women was raped which lead to prostitution which leads to victimization.

Cinematography wise this film did have some oddities. There were no shot-reverse-shot, but

there was extensive use of longshots and crane shots.

Yojimbo, 1961, literally meaning The Bodyguard was the first Kurosawa film we

watched. It follows the story of a samurai who wants to bring peace to a village. A few of the
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running themes in the movie were technology, old vs. new, anti-hero, and there are no good

guys. Reasonably uncommon at the time this film had a leading woman and was shot using a

telephoto lens. The Cinematography in this film added a new dimension to the story. Almost

every interior shot was tightly framed which added tension to what was going on, and the outside

shots were long shots to show how small the town was. Additionally, it incorporated high and

low angle shots to show gaps in strength and to show the perspective of who lost the fight. The

film was overall influenced by westerns, and this film went on to in turn inspire westerns, such

as Fist Full of Dollars (1964 by Sergio Leone).

Seven Samurai, 1954, follows the story of seven samurais on their quest to protect a

village from bandits. The story starts off with the village being attacked by bandits but decides to

halt the invasion until harvest time. Kambei saves a boy from a bandit, and the village ask for his

help defending the village. He accepts and goes to town to recruit six more samurais. They then

return to the village, but everyone is cowering in their houses fearing the samurai. Kikuchiyo

rings the alarm bell, and all the villagers gather in the village square. After this, they begin to

train the villagers for the impending battle and fortify the village. They tell the villagers that they

can't defend the houses on the outskirts it would be too risky, so they abandon them all except

the old man. The bandits come just as Kambei predicted and attacked the way he thinks they will

every time. Slowly they whittle away the bandits, but they also lose four samurais before the war

is won. That is the gist of the story, but more importantly, what does it all mean.

In the movie, the samurai were painted in a positive and negative light so were the

villagers. The villagers hate samurai until it came time to fight then they flocked to them. They

perceived them as machines of wars who would mooch of the farmers, rape their women, and

then destroy everything they own. Those seven samurais changed their views through their
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actions, but that was only at the end of the film. As the movie went on, we learned more about

Kikuchiyo, and he helped us paint a complete picture of how the villagers felt. He was a farmer

whose parents had been killed and left him as an orphan to fend for himself, so he knew the life

of a villager and samurai. Cinematography wise it was reasonably close to modern production.

He used three cameras which were equipped with telephoto lenses.

In both of his films, we watched there really was no clear-cut good guy or bad guy, it

painted the world as it is because people have different motives as to why they act. In Yojimbo,

neither family is worse than the other, and the Ronin isn't a good guy either, yes he helps the

village, but he causes a lot of devastation and gets pleasure from it. In Seven Samurai the farmers

and the bandits are just trying to survive while the samurai have no masters and are on their own

personal quests. Many of his other films included samurai which would become a hallmark of his

movies.

Kurosawa's films have inspired generations of young filmmakers with notable names

such as George Lucas, John Stuges, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and George Miller.

Many filmmakers all across the globe have copied or imitated his films, though some admit to

doing this other do not. John Stuges film Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) was a recent film that was

loosely based on Seven Samurai.

Later in Kurosawa's life, he established his own film company. The Kurosawa Production

Co. was established in 1959 and currently holds the rights to all of Kurosawa's films. The

company has been headed by his son, Hisao, since his death. Hisao is also the head of the Akira

Kurosawa foundation which hosts an annual short film competition.

Overall, I think Kurosawa has been a significant influence on the film world both directly

and indirectly. Last semester we covered auteur theory and from what I have seen of his work I
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would consider him an auteur. Personally, I think his films are essential to understanding the

history of cinema. He was using telephoto lenses and multi-cam setups before they became

common. He also perfectly blended western and Japanese styles into a more international style

that the entire world could enjoy.

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Works Cited

Richie, Donald (1996). The Films of Akira Kurosawa (3 ed.). Berkeley: University of California

Press. p. 107. ISBN 0520200268.

Kurosawa, Akira (1983). Something Like an Autobiography. Translated by Audie E. Bock.

Vintage Books. ISBN 0-394-71439-3.

Galbraith, Stuart, IV (2002). The Emperor and the Wolf: The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa

and Toshiro Mifune. Faber and Faber, Inc. ISBN 0-571-19982-8.

Goodwin, James. Perspectives on Akira Kurosawa. G. K. Hall & Co. ISBN 0-8161-1993-7.

Richie, Donald (2001). A Hundred Years of Japanese Film. Kodansha International. ISBN 4-

7700-2682-X.

“Ugetsu.” The Criterion Collection, www.criterion.com/films/369-ugetsu.

Chiao on [The Daily] Cineaste, Godard, and More, 2018-02-26, Peggy. “Kurosawas Early

Influences.” The Criterion Collection, 19 Oct. 2010,

www.criterion.com/current/posts/444-kurosawa-s-early-influences.

Kurosawa, Akira, director. Seven samurai. Film Stuck,

www.filmstruck.com/us/watch/detail/1300007240.

"Filmmaker remembered as 'pictorial Shakespeare'". Eugene Register-Guard (via Google News

Archive). The Associated Press. September 7, 1998. Retrieved June 10, 2017.

"Akira Kurosowa Memorial Tribute". ABC News. Retrieved June 12, 2017.

"Web Site" (in Japanese). Toho Co, Ltd. Retrieved June 9, 2017.

"Money paid for building Akira Kurosawa museum to be returned". The Mainichi Daily News.

June 6, 2010. Retrieved June 7, 2017.

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Winfrey, Graham. “'Seven Samurai': How Akira Kurosawa's Masterpiece Continues to Influence

Filmmakers Today - Watch.” IndieWire, 2 May 2017,

www.indiewire.com/2017/05/seven-samurai-akira-kurosawa-masterpiece-influence-

filmmakers-mad-max-fury-road-1201811690/.