Akira Kurosawa

   

Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa (黒澤 明 Kurosawa Akira, also 黒沢 明) (March 23, 1910 - September 6, 1998) was a prominent Japanese director, producer, and screenwriter of movies.

Work

Kurosawa is perhaps Japan's best-known filmmaker. His films have greatly influenced a whole generation of filmmakers worldwide. His first film (Sanshiro Sugata) was released in 1943; his last in 1999 (posthumously). During his lifetime he saw Japan change from an undeveloped country with military ambitions to a peaceful economic power.Few filmmakers have had a career so long or so acclaimed.

Kurosawa was born March 23, 1910, in Omori, Tokyo the youngest of seven children.He trained as a painter and began work in the film industry as an assistant director in 1936. He made his directorial debut in 1943 with Sugata Sanshiro . He became internationally famous with his 1950 film: Rashomon which won the Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival. Although he is most remembered for his films of the 1950s and 1960s, he continued to direct and write films until his death. .

Kurosawa's best-known films are set in Japan's feudal period (c. 13th century-17th century). Some of his plots are adaptations of William Shakespeare's works: Ran, based on King Lear, and Throne of Blood, based on Macbeth.

The Hidden Fortress (Japanese name Kakushi toride no san akunin), the tale of a princess, her general, and two buffoonish farmers, is credited by George Lucas as an influence on his Star Wars films. Other films include Rashomon, The Seven Samurai (later remade as the western The Magnificent Seven), and Yojimbo - the basis for the Clint Eastwood western A Fistful of Dollars. Yojimbo was followed by a sequel, Sanjuro.

Kurosawa also directed film adaptations of Russian novels, including The Idiot by Dostoevsky and The Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky. High and Low was based on a novel by American crime writer Ed McBain. Sixteen of his films, made between 1948 and 1964, feature many recurring actors - most notably Toshiro Mifune, whose relationship with Kurosawa began with 1948's Drunken Angel and ended with 1964's Red Beard.

After that film Kurosawa began working in colour and changed the style and scope of his films, which had formerly tended toward the epic. His subsequent film Dodesukaden, about a group of poor people living around a rubbish dump, was not a success. Kurosawa then began work on a Hollywood project, Tora! Tora! Tora!; but 20th Century Fox replaced him with Kinji Fukasaku before it was completed.

After this Kurosawa attempted suicide, but survived.He went on to make several more films: Dersu Uzala, made in the USSR and set in Siberia in the early 20th century, won an Oscar; Kagemusha, the story of a man who is the double of a medieval Japanese lord and takes over his identity; and the aforementioned Ran, which was a phenomenal international success and is considered to be the crowning artistic achievement of Kurosawa's career.

Kurosawa made three more films during the 1990's which were more personal than his earlier works. Akira Kurosawa's Dreams is a series of vignettes based on his own dreams. Rhapsody in August is about memories of the Nagasaki atom bomb and his final film: Madadayo is about a retired teacher and his former students.Kurosawa died September 6, 1998, in Setagaya, Tokyo.

Filmography

Further reading

  • Akira Kurosawa. Something Like An Autobiography. Vintage Books USA, 1983. ISBN 0394714393
  • Stephen Prince. The Warrior's Camera. Princeton University Press, 1999. ISBN 0691010463
  • Donald Richie, Joan Mellen. The Films of Akira Kurosawa. University of California Press, 1999. ISBN 0520220374

External links

See also Cinema of Japan.




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