Akira Kurosawa - Legendary Japanese movie director
Despite the relative obscurity of the Japanese language, the
Japanese movie industry has produced some directors whose finest works
rank highly among the world\'s best movies. Akira Kurosawa is the
best known and most accomplished.
Kurosawa has had a greater influence on world cinema than any other
Japanese director, ranging from the works of Steven Spielberg to the
\'spaghetti westerns\' of Clint Eastwood. He started out as a painter,
trained in the Western school, but gave it up to become an assistant
director at the age of 26. He also became an accomplished scriptwriter
before making his directorial debut in 1943 with the entertaining Sugata
Sanshiro, full of exciting martial arts fight scenes. After World
War II, he made several films dealing with the war and its
aftermath which enhanced his reputation. In 1950, Kurosawa
used medieval Japan as the setting for the first of his
great works, Rashomon. It centers around four characters different \'true\'
accounts of a rape and murder and examines the nature of truth. Rashomon was the first Japanese movie to win an international
award, taking first prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1951. It also
launched the career of actor Mifune Toshiro (1920-98), who appeared in 16
of Kurosawa\'s 29 films. To Live (Ikiru, 1952) dealt with the
question of how we can live a meaningful life through the story of a
bureaucrat who has cancer and only six months to live. Kurosawa\'s next
film, the epic Seven Samurai (Shichinin no Samurai, 1954), hardly
needs an introduction. It always ranks as one of the greatest films ever
made and even inspired a classic western, The Magnificent
Seven. An unemployed samurai is asked to help a farm village under
attack from bandits. He recruits six others and together they
defeat the bandits but not without losing four of their own. A film
of heroism, humor and humanity, it affirms the need to fight for a good
cause but asks "At what price?". Other Kurosawa classics include Yojimbo (1961) and The Shadow
Warrior (Kagemusha, 1980). The former was remade as the classic Clint
Eastwood western A Fistful of Dollars while the latter won the
Grand Prix at Cannes. In 1990, he made Akira Kurosawa\'s Dreams
(Yume) and was awarded a lifetime achievement Academy Award in Hollywood.
His last film, No, Not Yet! (Mada Dayo) was released in
1993.
Kurosawa readily acknowledged the great director Mizoguchi Kenji as his
master. But it was his relationship with the West that most easily seen in
his work. While his films influenced many foreign filmmakers, he was in
turn influenced by the great American director John Ford and the works of
foreign writers. The Idiot (Hakuchi, 1951) was based on the
Dostoevsky novel, The Lower Depths (Donzoko, 1957) on the Gorky
play, while Throne of Blood (Kumonosujo, 1957) and Ran (1985) were
versions of Shakespeare\'s Macbeth and King Lear. Within the Japanese film
world, Kurosawa was both praised and vilified for being such a
\'Western\' director, as if his films were seen as somehow not quite
Japanese. The criticism and difficulties he encountered as a result
led him to attempt suicide in 1971. After an attempted suicide, Kurosawa went on to make several more films
although arranging domestic financing was highly difficult despite his
international reputation. Dersu Uzala, made in the Soviet Union and
set in Siberia in the early 20th century, was the only Kurosawa film made
outside Japan and not in Japanese. It is about the friendship of a Russian
explorer and a nomadic hunter. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language
Film starring Maxim Munzuk as Dersu Uzala and Yury Solomin as Vladimir
Arsenyev.
Kurosawa passed away in September 1998, less than a year after the
death of his favorite leading man, Mifune. In 1999, a script which he
completed just before his death was turned into the film When the Rain
Lifts (Ame Agaru). A period piece with a fine cast, the film was
warmly received but clearly lacked one thing - the magic of one of the
world\'s visionary directors. "There is something that might be called cinematic beauty. It can
only be expressed in a film, and it must be present for that film to be a
moving work. When it is very well expressed, one experiences a
particularly deep emotion while watching that film. I believe that it is
this quality that draws people to come and see a film, and that it is the
hope of attaining this quality that inspires the director to make the film
in the first place." Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) Filmography:
Sanshiro Sugata (1943)
The Most Beautiful (1944)
Sanshiro Sugata Part II aka Judo Saga 2 (1945)
They Who Step on the Tiger\'s Tail (1945)
No Regrets for Our Youth (1946)
One Wonderful Sunday (1946)
Drunken Angel (1948)
The Quiet Duel (1949)
Stray Dog (1949)
Scandal (1950)
Rashomon (1950)
The Idiot (1951)
Ikiru aka To Live (1952)
The Seven Samurai (1954)
Record of a Living Being aka I Live in Fear (1955)
The Throne of Blood aka Spider Web Castle (1957)
The Lower Depths (1957)
The Hidden Fortress (1958)
The Bad Sleep Well (1960)
Yojimbo aka The Bodyguard (1961)
Sanjuro (1962)
High and Low aka Heaven and Hell (1963)
Red Beard (1965)
Dodesukaden (1970)
Dersu Uzala (1975)
Kagemusha aka Shadow Warrior (1980)
Ran (1985)
Dreams aka Akira Kurosawa\'s Dreams (1990)
Rhapsody in August (1991)
Madadayo aka Not Yet (1993)
Unknown words:
obscurity - непонятность
to rank - ценить; занимать какое-л. Место
accomplished - законченный, полный, совершенный
martial art - боевое искусство
aftermath - последствия, состояние после
to enhance - увеличивать, усиливать, улучшать
medieval - средневековый
setting - окружающая обстановка; декорации и костюмы
to inspire - вдохновлять
to defeat - одержать победу, наносить поражение
to release - выпускать в прокат ( о фильме )
to vilify - поносить, чернить ( кого-л. )
to encounter - наталкиваться, столкнуться ( с трудностями )
lavish - щедрый; неумеренный, расточительный
gourmet - гурман
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