Kurosawa
<b>Time Network Special Article </b>"Rashomon", "Raw Desire", "Seven Samurai", "Heart Stick", "Shadow Samurai", "Chaos"... If you want to finish Akira Kurosawa's masterpiece in one breath, I am afraid that it is a very test of lung capacity. Akira Kurosawa, known as the "samurai of the film industry", "the emperor of the film industry", and "shakespeare of the film industry", directed a total of thirty films in his fifty-year film career, which is not a very prolific number today. But what is amazing is that these thirty works have no repetition or similarity at all except for one sequel, "Continued Posture Sanshiro", and most of them have maintained a very high standard.
At the same time, Akira Kurosawa was also the first Asian filmmaker to break the monopoly of Europe and the United States, and he guided the international film art trend of the 1950s and 1960s, known as the "Revelation of the East". The starting point for him to break the monopoly naturally began with the release of "Rashomon" on August 25, 1950.
<b>↓ Click to watch the time network Kurosawa Akira special commemorative video (1) ↓</b>
Regarding Akira Kurosawa and his extremely brilliant and colorful film career, we can learn more about Akira Kurosawa's autobiography "The Oil of the Toad", the memoir "Image of compound eyes" by "Kurosawa The Great" screenwriter Shinobu Hashimoto, the assistant Teruo Nogami's "Waiting for the Clouds to Arrive", assistant director Tokuzo Tanaka's "Happy Times in Movies", and his daughter Kurosawa Kazuko's "Daddy Kurosawa Akira".
<b>▌</b> <b>"Xiao Ming" of "abandoning painting from shadow"</b>
Nowadays, many people around Akira Kurosawa recall him, and the first thing that comes to mind is his "big man of one meter and eight meters". But what you may not expect is that when this tall and mighty director was a child, "zero motor nerves", "fair skin, feminine in women", others thought that there was an "indescribable sour and sweet feeling" with him, and gave him the nickname of "crisp sugar". And that was after he had already practiced kendo, swimming, etc. at the request of his father, and thought he was very young and chivalrous.
Like many masters, Kurosawa developed very late, and he confessed that when he was a child, his brother was only four years older than him, but intellectually he was ten years behind his brother with excellent grades. Fortunately, "Xiaoming" met the guidance of a good teacher, and then gradually stepped into the right track of life, but it was his brother who went to the watershed of life after failing to pass the examination.
Speaking of Akira Kurosawa's film path, it is impossible not to mention Akira Kurosawa's brother Kurosawa. Kurosawa was an avid film lover and worked as an adult as a narrator for silent films. Under the influence of his brother, Akira Kurosawa has been watching good movies since he was a child. After his brother committed suicide and his original dream of becoming a painter was shattered, Kurosawa applied for one of Toho's predecessors, P.C.L Studio, with the mentality of trying it out, and was unexpectedly admitted to direct yamamoto Kajiro, and has since entered the world of cinema. Perhaps because of this, there has been less painter Akira Kurosawa in the world, but one more film director Akira Kurosawa.
<b>▌</b> <b>Rough road to directing</b>
Under the influence of Yamamoto Kajiro, Kurosawa learned a lot of skills in the early stage of guiding the actor's performance and editing the film in the later stage, while desperately writing the script, and after filming "Horse", Kurosawa Akira has been liberated from the position of deputy director and become a full-time playwright. After receiving the manuscript fee, he bought wine, drank and revived his body, and then wrote the script, until he wrote "The Germans of Dharma Temple", Kurosawa decided to direct it himself, but the script was killed by the inspector of the Ministry of the Interior. The subsequent "One Thousand and One Nights in the Forest" and "Flower of Semarang" also had the same fate, which allowed Kurosawa to open a "rage mode" against the Japanese film censorship system for many years.
After "Three Hundred Leagues in the Enemy" also vanished, Akira Kurosawa once again lost his hope of becoming a director and returned to the mode of "getting the fee and drinking alcohol". It wasn't until Kurosawa took the initiative to fight for the film adaptation rights of "Zi Sanshiro", which tells the story of judo genius, that he finally embarked on the path of directing.
As a young man, Akira Kurosawa (top) was supported by Yasujiro Ozu (bottom).
Unfortunately, "Zi Sanshiro" was still harassed by the prosecutor, but fortunately, the enthusiastic encouragement of the senior director Yasujiro Ozu eased the situation, and the angry Kurosawa Akira did not make a big fight.
After that, Kurosawa responded to the request of the military to shoot the "most beautiful black history", but it contributed to the marriage between him and Yoko Yaguchi in the future; forced by commercial pressure to shoot "Zi Sanshiro Continuation", the results were not very good, Kurosawa Akira also admitted that he was reluctantly doing his best; "The Bold People" and the prosecutor again circled but were banned for three years before being banned... It was not until the end of World War II and japan's defeat that it was on track with "I Have No Regrets about Youth" and "Beautiful Sunday".
Left: "Muddy Angel" and "Wild Dog" starring Toshiro Mifune and Joe Shimura Right: Akira Kurosawa personally modeled Toshiro Mifune
In "Muddy Angel", Akira Kurosawa finally opened a cooperation with his future "golden partner" Toshiro Mifune. The wonderful rivalry between The late Shimura Joe and Mifune Toshiro also made the three dazzling "Iron Triangles", from "Duel of Quiet Night", "Wild Dog", "Scandal", "Drunken Angel", "Rashomon" and 1954's "Seven Samurai". In Akira Kurosawa's 17 films from 1948 to 1965, Toshiro Mifune was only absent from "The Desire to Live".
Prior to Rashomon, Akira Kurosawa's last film was Scandal. The sensitive Akira Kurosawa was concerned about the violence of speech under the overdevelopment of post-war freedom of speech, which led to the film "Scandal". In fact, today, Kurosawa's worries have become more and more serious in the Internet age, and although this film even Kurosawa himself feels too naïve, its theme seems to be far from outdated.
The script on which the movie "Rashomon" is based is also not simple. The name "Rashomon" comes from a short story written by the literary giant Ryunosuke Wasagawa when he was young, and the main story is born from another short story based on folk tales, "In the Jungle". Hashimoto Shinobu, who later became a famous screenwriter, wanted to put Wasagawa's works on the screen, and Kurosawa Akira revised the script on the basis of Hashimoto Shinobi's script to have this later masterpiece.
<b>▌</b><b>[Original]</b>
<b>Ryunosuke Wasagawa's In the Jungle and Rashomon</b>
Ryunosuke Wasagawa
When it comes to Ryunosuke Wasagawa (1892-1927), anyone who knows a little about Japanese literature is thrilled by the name. This sensitive, suspicious and radiant novelist, along with Natsume Soseki and Mori Ouwai, is known as one of the three great masters of Japanese literature in the first half of the 20th century. Although Wasagawa only stayed in the world for a short period of 35 years, he dedicated 149 novels, 66 essays, 55 essays, and many commentaries, notes, travelogues, Chinese poems, waka songs, haiku and other works, translated into Chinese with five thick books and more than 2.8 million words.
Eight years after Wasagawa's death, The Japanese novelist Kikuchi Hiroshi (Sadayuki Ikasa's "Hell Gate" was adapted from Kikuchi Hiroshi's work) created the "Ishikawa Literature Prize" in honor of his friend, which has been awarded twice a year for literary newcomers, and has been awarded 153 times so far, and has long been "the highest award for pure japanese literature". Kiyoharu Matsumoto, Kenzaburo Oe, and RyuMurakami were all on the list, while Osamu Dazai was angry until his death because he rubbed shoulders with the first Wasagawa Award.
In Takashi Yamazaki's film "Forever Sunset of Sanchome", one of the male protagonists, "Ryunosuke Chagawa", dreams of winning the "Wasagawa Award", and even the pen name is "Wasagawa" of "Shanzhai". It shows that in that era, the weight of this award can already determine the future of a newcomer in the literary world.
The short story "Rashomon" is the first work of Ryunosuke Wasagawa, who studied English at the University of Tokyo in 1915, and entered the literary hall as a newcomer: at dusk, the servant who was sent away by his employer for many years came to Rashomon's door, and when he was desperate, he chose between "starving to death or being a robber", just at this time, he found an old woman pulling out the dead man's hair and preparing to make a wig, and the servant angrily asked the old woman why she did this, but the old woman said that the dead man had used snake meat to pretend to be fish meat to sell to the military camp. So there's nothing wrong with pulling out a few of her hairs. The servant listened and snatched the old woman's clothes and quickly fled... The short length of more than 3,000 words determines the oscillation between good and evil in people's hearts, and the cold and harsh atmosphere is intimidating.
Tadashi Maru and Masaru in the film (played by Toshiro Mifune and Kyo Machiko)
The main story of the movie "Rashomon" is actually from another short story, "In the Dense Forest" (also translated as "In the Bamboo Forest", "Deep in the Bamboo Forest", "In the Bamboo Bush", etc.), adapted from the folk tales of the late Heian period in Japan, "The Tale of the Past and Present": A samurai couple passing through the dense forest, accidentally encounter the infamous thief Tadashimaru, his wife Masaru is raped, and the samurai is killed. However, when Tatsumi Maru was finally arrested and the parties presented their testimony separately, they found that everyone's version was different, and the case became more and more confusing... In the order of the woodcutter, the foot-walking monk, the catcher, the witch, the Tadashi maru, the real sand, and the samurai undead, "In the Jungle" uses multiple paragraphs and multiple perspectives to unfold this story, and the whole text does not have any superfluous description except for the confession, short and concise. The word count is only more than a thousand words more than "Rashomon", but it is more storytelling, so it has become the main component of the movie "Rashomon".
<b>▌</b><b>[Script].</b>
<b>From Shinobu Hashimoto's "Hermaphrodites" to Akira Kurosawa's final draft of Rashomon</b>
Shinobu Hashimoto and Akira Kurosawa
The earliest version of the "Rashomon" film script came from Shinobu Hashimoto, and until the filming of "Rashomon", the screenwriter master and film giant who later worked on Akira Kurosawa's classic works "Desire for Life" and "Seven Samurai", no script has really been put on the big screen.
Hashimoto was originally a station attendant at the National Railways, but was conscripted into the army in 1938, but was exempted from military service for life due to tuberculosis. After four years in the nursing home for wounded and sick soldiers, although he escaped from the hands of the god of death, he was seriously injured and did not have the opportunity to return to China to resume his duties, so he transferred to the quartermaster company as a clerk. Ironically, the 40th Company of Tottori Infantry, to which Hashimoto once belonged, was transferred from China to Vietnam, then to Burma, to the Battle of Imphal, and almost completely destroyed.
Mansaku Itami
During the recuperation period of the sanatorium, a wounded soldier lent Hashimoto a copy of "Japanese Movies", Hashimoto read it and felt that the original film script was so simple, from the mouth of the wounded soldier learned that the first Japanese screenwriter at that time was Itami Wansaku (a famous Japanese writer and director, and his son Itami Thirteen was also a film director), so he "did not measure up" to submit the manuscript to Itami, and did not expect to be out of control from then on. As soon as Hashimoto had the script, he gave it to Itami to comment on and revise, and Itami Wansaku became Hashimoto's mentor on the road to screenwriting. However, when Hashimoto shinobu tried to convey the joy of receiving Itami's first reply to the wounded soldiers in the same ward, he found that the other party's condition had deteriorated and he had died.
However, the friendship with the teacher was not long. Hashimoto went to Andan's house to discuss the script for only about three years, and on September 21, 1946, Itami Wansaku (who was also a tuberculosis patient) who was suffering from The same disease as Hashimoto Shinobi also passed away. Itami's death dealt a major blow to Hashimoto, causing Hashimoto to give up writing for nearly half a year. However, when Hashimoto recalled ItamiMansaku's last words before his death, he regained his strength and began to try to create a script by adapting literary works.
Hashimoto discovers that the three great literary heroes of the Taisho era, Natsume Soseki ("The Young Master") and Mori Ouwai ("Abe Clan"),all have representative works that have been adapted and put on the big screen, but only Ryunosuke Ishikawa is absent. Hashimoto saw that among Wasagawa's works, "Thief" is the easiest to visualize, and it is not difficult to adapt "Robes and Shengyuan", but "the blood color of both is not good enough." It is reddish, raw, common blood. And what I wanted was red, black blood, glowing from the depths. But I didn't see any such works. ”
"However, there is a work, not red and black, but a cloudy black. The blood color was not only delicately black, but also emitted a fishy smell. This is "In the Jungle" – the only one that Hashimoto believes can be adapted without changing the substance, and even "using this article as material, it may be possible to create a new Japanese film that has never been seen before, a period drama that does not follow the ordinary logic." It took only three days to complete the script, and Hashimoto thought that since it was a story that took place between the sexes, he named it "Hermaphrodites."
Shinobu Hashimoto is on set, with Nomura Yoshitaro on his right
Before his death, Itami Manzo entrusted Hashimoto Shinobu to his assistant director Saburaki, and through Saburaki, Hashimoto Shinobu finally hooked up with Akira Kurosawa, whom Itami had discovered through the script. Akira Kurosawa selected "Male and Female" among Hashimoto's many scripts to adopt. However, the length of the "Hermaphrodite" script is less than half the length of the ordinary script, so at Hashimoto's suggestion, the two decided to add "Rashomon" to it.
Interestingly, Hashimoto found it very difficult to seamlessly connect the two, and could only turn the story of the servant in "Rashomon" into a prequel to Tadashi maru in "In the Jungle", but Tadashimaru was not the only protagonist of "In the Jungle", so the blunt grafting could not simply cope with the past, so he overturned his "two-in-one" idea, hoping to extend the previous situation and tell how the samurai Takehiro Kanazawa and his wife Masaharu expanded the space together. But because hashimoto had a herniated disc attack, the program was stillborn.
Woodcutter and monk in the movie Rashomon
Instead, Akira Kurosawa's own revised script continued this "two-in-one" proposal: a man passing through the rain learned the story of "In the Jungle" through the paraphrase of the woodcutter (who was ultimately set to be a firewood seller in the film), and then became a servant in Rashomon and snatched the clothes of the abandoned baby under Rashomon. The woodcutter's conscience finds that the adoption of abandoned babies — a film permeated with the smell of human evil — ends up with a glimmer of warmth and hope.
For the two plans, Hashimoto struggled for a long time, and finally admitted that his "expansion plan" was compact, but compared with the current "Rashomon", the pattern momentum seemed to be more than one and a half heads shorter, and there was a small family atmosphere of resignation. Although the final ending of "Rashomon" is flawed, it is like a scar on a man's forehead, and the overall impression is strong and powerful, full of "the general sense of urgency and oppression that is about to pounce on some invisible animal."
In that era, "Rashomon" made people think deeply about the crisis of human nature as never before, and as a film itself, it also created a lot of "impossible". The film is also interesting from pre-shooting to post-processing. Some of the so-called "interesting things" recalled afterwards were veritable "accidents" at the time.
<b>▌ How did the city gate in the movie come about? </b>
With Hashimoto Shinobu's script foundation, Kurosawa gathered the main creators such as Kazuo Miyagawa, Fumio Hayasaka, and Takashi Matsuyama, as well as actors Toshiro Mifune (as Tadashi Maru), Yoshimura (as Wood Chopper), Kyomachiko (as Samurai's wife Masaru), Masayuki Mori (as Takehiro Kanazawa), Chiakishi (as Walking Foot Monk), Daisuke Kato (as Catcher), Yoshijiro Ueda (as Servant), Androme Fumiko (as Witch) and other main creators, gathered under the "Rashomon" built and moved towards a masterpiece.
Rashomon gate is the gate of Luocheng, and Luocheng is the outer outline of the city, so Rashomon is the "outer outline of the city". Akira Kurosawa confessed that he had not been able to figure out the structure of the Gate of Rashomon many times, and in order to reflect the hugeness of Rashomon Gate, the door in the film was actually built with reference to the mountain gate of the temple.
Half of the roof of the city gate was torn down
This "Rashomon Gate" façade is 33 meters wide, 22 meters deep, 20 meters high, covers an area of 1980 square meters, and is indeed called a "behemoth". Because the beams and pillars were too large to support, half of the roof had to be demolished, but this actually highlighted the desolate and dilapidated heian period that the film was trying to render, which can be described as "killing two birds with one stone". The film was nominated for Best Art Direction/Prop Set (Black and White) at the 25th Academy Awards.
Firewood sellers, foot-walking monks and servants under Rashomon
When Akira Kurosawa gave this location plan to Daiei, he said that the set was only used for this city gate and the wall of the picket office, and all of them were shot on location, and Daiei Company happily accepted the plan. As a result, Matsutaro Kawaguchi, a director of Daiying, found that it was better to build such a large location than to build a hundred sets in the studio to save money, which was "a big pawn on Kurosawa's brother".
It is worth mentioning that the heavy rain over Rashomon Gate in the film looks very gloomy because the rain is mixed with ink, and this idea was conceived by the wife of photographer Kazuo Miyagawa. In order to create the heavy rain in the film, the crew specially used three fire trucks, and they all later became the heroes of the Kyoto Studio fire.
Early stage: "Rashomon" field shooting two or three things
<b>▌</b> <b>Early stage: "Rashomon" field shooting two or three things</b>
Akira Kurosawa on the set of "Rashomon"
Perhaps because there was no precedent for films in the form of Rashomon in that era, before filming began, Daiei arranged three assistant directors for Akira Kurosawa, namely first deputy director Yasushi Kato, second deputy director Mitsuo Wakasagi, and third deputy director Tokuzo Tanaka. Although the circumstances of these three people in the future are very different, they are all counted as directors with different characteristics. Surprisingly, they had come to the hotel to consult Akira Kurosawa because they could not read the script, and after explaining it, Kato Tai still said that he could not understand, and then had to leave the crew.
Filming in the forest in the 1950s was rare, but Rashomon chose the native forest of the nara mountains and the forest of Komeiji Temple near Kyoto, because it was the height of summer, and there were many mountain ants in the forest, so the crew had to apply salt to their necks, arms and even socks when they went out on location. During the filming process near the Temple of Light, the crew cut down trees privately in order to get better light, and the monks in the temple were very angry at first, and later understood the work of the crew and took the initiative to direct the cutting of trees, and the abbot of the temple also gave a folding fan written "Beneficial to All Sentient Beings" to Kurosawa.
Toshiro Mifune Yokyo Machiko Enko Omoshiko
At that time, Kurosawa was just over forty years old, was at the peak of his life, and his energy was also very energetic during the shooting process, and every night he would hold a dinner party on the mountain, and there would be a dish called "Mountain Thief Grill" at the dinner: "Beef is dipped in oil to grill, and curry powder is added to the hot cream as a seasoning." When eating, I hold an onion in one hand and nibble on it from time to time, which is savage." Therefore, the night before the kiss scene between Tadashi Maru and Masaru, Toshiro Mifune, who has always been happy to take care of others, stopped eating garlic and rinsed his mouth solemnly before taking the photo.
Rashomon has many innovations in photography
When it comes to the cinematography of this film, the most talked about by posterity is the challenge of "shooting at the sun". In that era, photographing the sun head-on was considered a photographic taboo, and some people believed that the sun was focused through the lens and had the danger of burning the film. However, the photographer Kazuo Miyagawa took the risk of doing so. As a result, this practice did not cause a combustion accident, but achieved great success. In short, the artist's crazy nature has been verified again and again by several creators of "Rashomon".
In the film, Tatsumimaru tricks the real sand into the woods creatively uses the panning method, that is, drawing a circle around the camera and letting the actors run around the camera 360 degrees. But in order to achieve a certain speed, it was not easy, because the camera could not capture Kyomachiko's feet, so she was actually wearing a costume under the luck! move! shoes!
Post: "Last Minute Rescue"
<b>▌</b> <b>Post-production: "Last Minute Rescue"</b>
During the filming of Rashomon, the Daiei Studio in Kyoto experienced two fires, but the film was finally released as scheduled. This past has thus become a beautiful talk in the history of Daying.
The first fire occurred on August 21, and the film will premiere on August 25. The fire burned from the second studio, and the editing room of that era was still using negative film editing, and each film crew had piles of negatives. And the nitric acid tablets used at that time were flammable, and the editing room was a wooden bungalow... Therefore, in the event of a fire, everyone immediately made a mess and moved the negatives out one after another. Even people from other studios nearby came to help.
At this time, the fire truck used to shoot the rain scene of "Rashomon" came speeding in familiarity, and after all the film was moved, the flames were also extinguished, and the fire truck became a "firefighting hero". Because assistant director Mitsuo Wakasa promptly rescued the negative box of "Rashomon", the previous filming work was not in vain (however, this person was later treated unfairly in the "Toho Strike" incident and was finally removed from the trade union).
From left to right: "Wood Cutter" Shimura Joe, "Witch" Bunko Honma, "Samurai" Masayuki, director Akira Kurosawa, "Samurai Wife Masaha" Kyomachiko, and "Robber" Toshiro Mifune. The three absentees in the cast are "Monk" Chiaki Shi, "Servant" Ueda Yoshijiro, and "Servant" Daisuke Kato.
However, the work of tidying up is extremely hard. The negatives of "Rashomon" are also mixed with the materials of other crews, and the sound dialogue cannot be distinguished by the eyes, which is time-consuming and laborious to sort out. A recording of Tatsumaru's dialogue could not be found, so he had to re-record to bring Toshiro Mifune back from Tokyo. This line of dialogue is the one: "I have never seen a woman with such a strong temperament." ”
However, the next day after the fire, the film crew began dubbing work, and the screening room caught fire again. Although recording engineer Yan Otani and recording assistant Akira Akira calmly curbed the fire with water, the two were stunned by the toxic gas from the celluloid combustion contained in the film. Soon after the rescue, the recording work continued that night, and the original soundtrack was completed from the morning of the 23rd until noon on the 24th.
The first copy was completed at 7 p.m. that night, and assistant director Tokuzo Tanaka rushed to Tokyo with the freshly baked copy on the last night train. In the early morning of the 25th, the copy was sent to the Daiei Head Office for trial screening. An hour later, the Premiere of the Imperial Theater began. On the 26th, the national screening began. So many dramatic accidents have occurred in just a few days, but they have not affected the final release of the film, and to some extent, it can also be seen how desperate the filmmakers of that era were.
Toshiro Mifune, Kyomachi, Masayuki Mori and director Akira Kurosawa
When today's us have long been accustomed to the "no good person" film noir and various "brain-burning" multi-line narratives, the dogma of "at the beginning of man, nature is good" has long been thrown into the trash can, and the flat and direct flow account movie is difficult for people to buy. The controversy between the various people in the plot of "Rashomon" may seem too trivial today, but when we look back at the real story behind the "Rashomon" movie, it is not difficult to find that the "Rashomon" about "Rashomon" has actually been staged.
<b>▌ Can people of that era really understand Rashomon? </b>
In fact, "Rashomon" was supposed to be shot by Toyoko Corporation, but in 1948, when the script and financial budget were completed, Toyoko still felt that he should not take this risk, and the shooting was canceled. Akira Kurosawa's old club, Toho Pictures, for which he worked intermittently for many years, did not support the film. In the end, Daiei Company, which signed a one-year distribution and production contract with Akira Kurosawa, took the order.
So, does Daying really understand this "Rashomon"?
In this regard, Kurosawa said generously: "Daiei is like investing in Shochiku in "Idiot", investing in Toho in "The Living Man's Record" - let those who have enough courage to try something unusual to shoot it." But in fact, the leader of the big film, Masaichi Nagata, left the film in the middle of the premiere, and even after the film won awards abroad, he still claimed to the outside world that he "hardly understood" the film.
Posters of the national editions of Rashomon
However, Daiei held its premiere at the Imperial Theatre, one of the best theaters in Tokyo at the time, and invited various news outlets to participate. Then, the first two-week operation was carried out on various theater lines of the big screening. In fact, the film ranked fourth in the list of the most profitable films of 1950, not the later legendary box office failure. At the same time, in contrast to Shoichi Nagata, although the audience at that time did not have an ideal evaluation of the film, it did not reflect how puzzling the film was.
Ironically, a company manager who tried to make things difficult for Akira Kurosawa at the beginning of the filming of the film said with a shy face in an interview with a TV reporter that everything was completed because of his promotion. Even the innovation of the film crew's first attempt to shoot at the sun was recorded in his credit book, and there was no mention of the names of Akira Kurosawa and photographer Kazuo Miyagawa.
This incident greatly angered Akira Kurosawa, but at the same time, he seemed to be beginning to reflect on whether he was also suspected of self-glorification. So his autobiography "The Oil of the Toad," which he completed in 1978, ended abruptly by the time Rashomon won in 1951, apparently not on a whim. Interestingly, many years later, her daughter Kazuko Kurosawa bluntly spoke about her father's marriage to Yoko Yaguchi, and the description in "The Oil of the Toad" is completely different from her mother's statement, "it is simply a version of Rashomon".
Is Rashomon a film that pleases the West?
<b>▌ "Rashomon" is a movie that pleases the West? </b>
Much differently from today, Japan knew nothing about the Venice Film Festival, even though it came from the "Axis Powers" that had been allied. So when the festival sent out an invitation to Japan, the Japanese film industry was actually in a state of panic, and Rashomon was not even considered.
Thanks to the representative of the Italian Film Festival in Japan, the filmmaker Ms. Stella Mijgli, who had the insight to pay special attention to this film, the film was later able to become famous in the world. However, when she proposed to recommend the film, the opposition was endless - daying did not hope or trust the film, and finally reluctantly submitted it to the exhibition under extreme reluctance. No wonder Akira Kurosawa later complained that he himself didn't know about it beforehand.
Akira Kurosawa and Donald Ritchie (first from left), an expert in Japanese film studies, who have written books such as Akira Kurosawa's Films and Ozu
"Rashomon" eventually won the Golden Lion Award and the Italian Film Critic Award at the 1951 Venice Film Festival, which deeply shocked Japan. After all, this is the first time that post-war Japan has been recognized as the highest award in the field of culture in the Western world, and it is a great encouragement to many Japanese who have lost hope and are devastated after the defeat. However, Japanese commentators have taken an arrogant posture, believing that this is nothing more than the result of Westerners' curiosity about the "exoticism" of the East. (This argument is similar to the situation faced by "sixth-generation" directors such as Jia Zhangke, Wang Xiaoshuai, and Lou Ye in China.) ）
The lack of national self-confidence in the critics confused Akira Kurosawa. 27 years after winning the award, the puzzled Akira Kurosawa still expressed helplessness: "I can only say that this is a sad national nature." But in any case, the film's success allowed Akira Kurosawa to quickly emerge from the shadow of the "Idiot" box office fiasco and gain international fame. Akira Kurosawa was able to return to his old club, Toho, which led to another of his later masterpieces, "The Desire to Be Born".
From today's point of view, the reason why "Rashomon" can become a long-lasting classic in the history of world cinema is precisely because it transcends the limitations of nationality and regionality, and directly penetrates into the essence of human nature for torture - doubt and speculation are not unique to Western society, but the "spiritual surgery" necessary for modern society to progress. For more than half a century, this work has been repeated in the West and countries around the world outside the West, and has been repeatedly interpreted and discussed at different levels, which has explained everything.
Rashomon is Akira Kurosawa's 11th directorial work, which is also Akira Kurosawa's fifth collaboration with Toshiro Mifune on the big screen and his seventh collaboration with Joe Shimura.
The shadow of the swaying leaves on Tadashimaru's body was created by the lighting team shaking a branch in front of the lamp. If you need a large area of tree shadows, you also need to put a net cover on Toshiro Mifune's head, and properly insert branches on it to shake together.
In the passage of Masaha's confession, Akira Kurosawa deliberately chose the famous "Bolero Dance" by the French composer Ravel. In fact, if you listen carefully, you will find that many of the soundtracks in the film follow the rhythmic style of "Bolero Dance", but some Western film critics believe that this is a manifestation of the lack of creativity of composer Fumio Hayasaka.
Kurosawa thought that the spatial sense of the distant ambient sounds and human roars could not be recorded in the recording studio, so he asked to record it outdoors. As a result, recording engineer Yan Otani and recording assistant Koichi Hongtani accepted the challenge for the first time: in the open space behind the recording studio, use mirrors and curtains to reflect the images on the projector, and record synchronously in this way;
During the fire at Daiei and the rescue of the negatives by all the staff, photographer Kazuo Miyagawa fainted because an important film could not be found, and afterwards Kurosawa Akira walked into the infirmary to confirm that the film had been protected by his own pocket, and Miyagawa was relieved.
Because at that time, in order to save costs, even the steps of the plywood were omitted during shooting, so the finished film actually only connected the front and back shots in order and then washed and printed, which caused Akira Kurosawa to be extremely angry about the editing effect, and the first internal test screening would be unhappy. Kurosawa asked for all the film to be printed and edited by hand, which was called an "industrial revolution" at the Daiei Kyoto Studios at the time.
But it was precisely because of this anger that Kazuo Miyagawa, a photographer who had always admired Akira Kurosawa, could not find the right opportunity to ask the director's evaluation of the photography. Much later, when Akira Kurosawa learned about it from Shimura's mouth, he hurriedly said, "One hundred points!" Photography is a hundred points! Even more than a hundred points! ”
The prop used for the shoot, the Rashomon Gate plaque, has been preserved intact in the home of photographer Kazuo Miyagawa.
"Rashomon Gate" plaque