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In 1951, at the age of 41, Akira Kurosawa rose to prominence and won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for "Rashomon". Since then, he has won numerous awards. At the 1990 Academy Awards, he also won a lifetime achievement award, becoming a world-class Japanese director and master. Miyazaki, who is also a Japanese director, is respectful to him, the great American director Steven Spielberg calls him "the Shakespeare of the film world", and even Márquez believes that "'One Hundred Years of Solitude' can only be made into a movie by Akira Kurosawa." And China's famous directors Xu Ke, Jia Zhangke, Zhang Yimou, etc., also bluntly said that they were deeply influenced by him.
My first encounter with Akira Kurosawa began with his film Rashomon. At that time, I had just finished reading Ryunosuke Wasagawa's novel "In the Bamboo Forest", and I always felt that I was still unfinished, so I found a film adapted from him, "Rashomon". In the novel, the murder is unresolved, but in the movie, it gives a clear and reasonable truth. This shocked me, who had been tormented by curiosity. I realized that Akira Kurosawa was so powerful that he fully understood what Wasagawa meant.
How much do we know about Akira Kurosawa? What about his work? Today, in 1998, Akira Kurosawa died in Tokyo. Today I would like to share with you 8 works by director Akira Kurosawa in honor of this great master.
By rejuvenation
《Figure Sanshiro》
○ 1943
Starring: Okochi Kojiro, Shimura Akira, Sugai Ichiro, Koda
Genre: Drama / Action / Adventure
Synopsis
33-year-old Akira Kurosawa entered the industry for 9 years, and he first directed the tube, shooting his debut film "Zi Sanshiro". This shot is the style of the master. The film is about the fifteenth year of Meiji, when judo enthusiast Zisaboro inadvertently witnesses the battle between the Menma Party and the Shudokan. The master of the shudo hall, Yano Motogoro, single-handedly defeated the Menma party with judo, which made Zi Sanshiro convinced and worshipped him as his teacher. However, Yano felt that he was aggressive by nature and rebellious, and deliberately tested his patience. Zi Sanshiro was fortunate to be guided by the old monk, hugged the tree into the water and indulged for many days, and finally understood the master's teachings. After that, under the tutelage of the teacher, Zi Sanshiro's judo improved by leaps and bounds, and he became famous in the battle against the Menma Party. Finally, he realized that "the way of being a man is the way of nature in heaven and earth."
3 reasons
@ Tian Yingyuan: Relying on the wonderful original novel, the movie story itself is not bizarre, but it is quite charming. Under the scheduling of Akira Kurosawa's wonderful images, it is even more evocative. Several martial arts plays have their own characteristics and are never monotonous and repetitive... Many years later, in "Judo Dragon and Tiger List" (also the Hong Kong translation of the 1977 TV drama version of "Zi San Si Lang"), Du Qifeng arranged for Leung Ka Fai with a cloth belt and "blind" Gu Tianle to also come to a grass war to pay tribute to the previous masters.
Rashomon
○ 1950
Starring: Toshiro Mifune, Akira Senshu, Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori, Akira Shimura
Genre: Drama / Suspense / Crime
Rashomon Gate, the main south gate of Kyoto, Japan. The monk, the firewood chopper and the beggar sheltered from the rain under the city gate, and the three of them chatted, and the topic began, and the prelude to the story began: a samurai and his wife encountered an accident when they passed through the barren mountain. His wife was raped by the murderer, and the samurai was brutally killed. How did the tragedy come about? Murderers, wives, and witches who testify by borrowing the spirits of samurai all have their own opinions.
There is only one truth, but the purpose for which each person gives testimony is different. In order to beautify their own morality, alleviate their sins, and cover up their mistakes, everyone begins to narrate a version of the story that glorifies themselves. The tragedy on the barren mountain has become a fog that cannot be clearly seen.
After talking, the rain passed. The woodcutter found a weeping abandoned baby next to Rashomon. He decided to adopt it and carried the baby into the depths of the setting sun.
@ViViAN LiAnG: Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, the naked weakness and lies of human nature. Film from 1950. Black and white, rough, plain. Straight to the heart.
It's already the third time I've seen it. Still shocked, not tired. At the same time, see something more.
A ruined temple, an old plaque, a heavy rain, a story. Human nature is so ugly to be presented.
Akira Kurosawa's approach is unique and powerful. Through the mouth of the woodcutter, the first person to discover the murder scene recounted the whole incident to a passerby during the time he took refuge in a heavy rain under the dilapidated Rashomon Gate.
The Seven Samurai
○ 1954
Starring: Joe Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Shigeru Chiaki, Daisuke Katong, Andō Kimura
Akira Kurosawa spent 18 months filming "Seven Samurai", which can be said to be the first era drama by the famous Japanese director Akira Kurosawa to truly join the fun of Western films, depicting the story of the Japanese Sengoku period, when the people of poor villages joined forces with seven hired samurai to fight off bandits in order to defend their homeland. The war foliage adopts many continuous and plural shots, which are more tense and shocking than ordinary Westerns, fully revealing the depth of Kurosawa's mirror skills.
@Yun Feiyang: Samurai with no city to defend, ronin with no branches to rely on, why are they fighting? Food, clothing, honor, or the value of life? Even for the sake of others, even if they are going to wither away from home, the guards will give up their lives and forget their lives just for the cherry blossom-like moment. The "Seven Samurai" were buried for an era in this way. Yes, it was a victorious battle, but it was a heroic song.
Kingdom of Heaven and Hell
○ 1963
Starring: Toshiro Mifune, Kyoko Kagawa, Koya Nakadai
Genre: Drama / Thriller / Crime
At Kwon Fuji Imigo's home, a board meeting on the national footwear industry was held to discuss the quality of the new shoes. Kwon Teng's opinion was impassioned, and he felt that he should not only focus on reducing costs and increasing profits, but ignore the quality of the shoes themselves. The remarks were clearly very different from the others' philosophy of quick success, so others conspired to depose him from the board and replace him with an obedient puppet. That night, the son of Quan Teng's driver was suddenly kidnapped, and the kidnappers thought that he was Quan Teng's son, so they extorted a ransom of 30 million yuan from Quan Teng. In the face of his wife's persuasion, the troubled Quan Teng had to be forced to obey, and as a result, the prisoner used a blindfold method to avoid the eyes and ears of the inspector and successfully withdrew the cash without leaving any trace. The money-breaking Quan Teng also faces the double threat of the company and the creditor. The police found a couple of lovers who died of drug use at the kidnapping site. However, this is only the beginning of the criminal conspiracy...
@Comel: The opening session is a meeting of several directors, due to the company's development, personnel and other issues of disagreement, the two sides are tense, so they play their own tricks. Seeing this, the audience will think that this film is about the confrontation between "good" and "evil", and the next step must be all kinds of trickery mechanisms... Sure enough, within five minutes, the kidnapping case appeared, and I didn't expect the enemy to move so quickly, so the police quickly appeared. The more people involved, the more complex the plot is and the better it looks.
Red Beard
○ 1965
Starring: Toshiro Mifune, Yuzo Kayama, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Reiko Tsuge, Kyoko Kagawa
Genre: Drama
Hoshimoto, a recently graduated medical student, came to the Koishikawa Clinic in the backwoods of the countryside for an internship under the introduction of his father. His teacher was an eccentric physician known as Redbeard. At first, Baoben, who was committed to being an aristocratic medical officer, was extremely disgusted with this slum and became angry with Red beard, feeling that he had been deceived and useless.
Red Beard is famous for being a master of the apricot forest here. He practiced medicine silently, without fear of the powerful, without pay, and he cured countless patients. These include young women who are mentally disturbed by abuse, drunks who are half numb due to alcoholism, and young prostitutes who are infected with diseases because they are trafficked in Qinglou. In the process of assisting Redbeard to save his life and help the injured, Baoben gradually discovered the importance of medical ethics and corrected his attitude towards life...
@ Little Hoof: A director's talent is reflected in the intriguing taste that his film can bring to the audience, and this kind of patient taste-seeking fun is not only reflected in whether the director is a storyteller, but also reflects in the depth of his understanding of the narrative art of film. It is said that when Akira Kurosawa made the film, he was arbitrary and arbitrary, shouting, and striving to perform every detail of the film perfectly. Its black-and-white films with excellent light and shadow have given me endless pleasure. What amazes me is not the excellence of one of his works, I am amazed that each of his works is equally outstanding, watching Akira Kurosawa's films is not only a process of moving or surprising, but a process that is both easy to understand and long-lasting, and in it is not only the visual pleasure of the surface, but the art of expression that can be gradually understood when watching the film.
Shadow Warrior (also translated as Shadow Samurai)
○ 1980
Starring: Nakadai Koya, Yamazaki Tsutomu, Hagiwara Kenichi
Genre: Drama/History/War
At the end of the sixteenth century, the Japanese masses divided the territory and chased the deer in the Central Plains. Among them, Takeda Shingen, Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu were the most powerful.
In 1537, Takeda Shingen led an army that defeated the combined forces of Oda Nobunaga and Tokugawa Ieyasu, and took advantage of the victory to pursue, besieging Tokugawa Ieyasu's subordinate castle of Noda Castle the following year. Seeing that Takeda Shingen was about to sweep the world, but there was an unexpected storm in the sky, Shingen died in the army.
At this time, the Takeda Army, which had the advantage, took a sharp turn for the worse, and the military was in turmoil for a while. Several ministers secretly found a shadow samurai who looked exactly like Takeda Shingen, stabilized the morale of the army, and successfully withdrew.
▲ "Shadow Warrior" sub-shot (Akira Kurosawa) and movie scene comparison
@Wakase: Unlike "Seven Samurai", as Akira Kurosawa's first color film, the color of "Shadow Samurai" is very bold and impactful, but there is no trace of deliberate carving. This color is quite different from the classic use of shots in his works, the plain storytelling method, but the huge impact is the same. Later films such as "Chaos" and "Dream" also have similarities in the use of color. IMDB scored 7.9 (5886 votes) and I scored 9.
"Chaos"
○ 1985
Starring: Nakadai Ryoya, Terao Ryo, Nezu Jinhachi, Ryu Daisuke, Nomura Manjo
Genre: Drama / Action / War
Yiwen Xiuhu has been fighting for many years, and the means are cruel. At the age of seventy, Xiuhu prepared to divide the family business into three, with three sons taking over the power. He summoned Taro Takaho, Jiro Masaho, and Saburō Naohu to him, and admonished the three brothers with the metaphor of "the arrow will break, and the three arrows will continue to break", and told them to share a common relationship. On the spot, Sanlang broke three arrows across his knees to protest his father's miscarriage of the world and his ignorance of human feelings. Xiuhu was furious and expelled Saburo. Sanlang then went to a neighboring country to join him as a son-in-law.
Later, the writer was indeed told by Sanlang that the perfidious admonition came true. The turmoil between father and son and brother begins, what will be the fate that will greet them?
▲ "Chaos" sub-shot (Kurosawa Akira) and movie scene comparison
@ Saturday I want to rest: the composition of the film is beautiful, the color is beautiful, even the opening scene, the three horses in the mountains, the three samurai are so beautiful, quietly brewing. The war scenes are also grand, and the dynamic shots are as beautiful as ever. Many long shots, medium shots, and long-range shots are obviously different from the style that Akira Kurosawa used to give characters a big close-up.
"Dreams"
○ 1990
Starring: Kasa Satoshi, Terao Akira, Harada Mieko, Mizuko Kuwa
Genre: Drama / Fantasy
The film presents Akira Kurosawa's depiction of dreams. There are eight dreams in the film: Sun Rain, Peach Orchard, Wind and Snow, Tunnel, Crow, Red Mt. Fuji, Weeping Devil and Waterwheel Village. The Eight Dreams run through almost all the themes of human life: respect and forgiveness, love and faith, war and peace, art and redemption, the authenticity and simplicity of human nature, and so on. Different dreams have different scenes, with different colors, presenting all the themes that humans face one by one. Eight stories are fantastic and full of meaning, implying Akira Kurosawa's profound thinking and understanding of life.
"In this film, I include my entire view of today's society... Nowadays the beautiful nature is disappearing... At the same time, of course, the good human mind will disappear. I just want to describe naturally my nostalgia for nature and my good heart. ”
--Akira Kurosawa
▲ "Dream" sub-shot (Kurosawa Akira) and movie scene comparison
@Ma Yinghao: The whole movie is made up of eight dreams. There is no clear protagonist, so the characters who seem to appear coherently in the film have symbolic significance. This is the personal dream of director Akira Kurosawa, and it is also the dream of the entire Japanese nation and the dream of all mankind. This approach is even more intriguing. Therefore, regardless of the conception of this film, nor the picture processing of the film, it is worthy of a good work in terms of the breadth and depth involved in this film.
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This article is published by the new classic collation / pictures to the web
Editors of this issue: Huan Huan, Lan Chuan