Rashomon (1950)

Rashomon (1950): adapted from stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa by Akira Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto; directed by Akira Kurosawa; starring Toshiro Mifune (Tajomaru), Machiko Kyo (Masako Kanazawa), Masayuki Mori (Takehiro Kanazawa), Takashi Shimura (Woodcutter), Minoru Chiaki (Priest), and Kichijiro Ueda (Commoner):

The film that brought the attention of the world to writer-director Akira Kurosawa, Rashomon (named for the city gate beneath which its frame story occurs) remains a terse gem, expansive in its vision of humanity's faults and strengths. The structure is maybe the least interesting thing about it, and the structure is brilliant -- the same rape-and-murder incident told in four wildly different ways by four different voices. 

The incident takes place in the countryside of feudal Japan. The frame story, central to the full vision of Kurosawa's morality, takes place at a ruined temple where three travelers, including a Monk grown weary of humanity's moral failings, shelter from a torrential downpour.

Those four voices are that of the alleged rapist and murderer, the disgraced wife, the murdered husband (by way of a medium), and an eyewitness. I remember reading a review from the time in which the American reviewer tried to figure out which version was correct. That reviewer discarded the testimony of the husband because ghosts don't exist. This is what I call missing the point of a movie.

I can't think of anything bad to say about Rashomon. The performances are splendid, the shot composition deft and often haunting, and whatever the moral of the whole thing might be, it's far from simple. It's also Kurosawa's shortest great film, clocking in at about 90 minutes, less than half the length of Seven Samurai and more than an hour shorter than Kagemusha and Ran. So you've got time to watch it! Highly recommended.

Kagemusha (1980)

Kagemusha (1980): written by Masato Ide and Akira Kurosawa; directed by Akira Kurosawa; starring Tatsuya Nakadai (Shingen Takeda/ Kagemusha), Tsutomu Yamazaki (Nobukado Takeda), Ken'ichi Hagiwara (Katsuyori Takeda), and Jinpachi Nezu (Sohachiro Tsuchiya):  

Kagemusha occurs in 16th-century feudal Japan, with financing to complete the film arranged by George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola.  Kagemusha literally means 'double' or 'shadow warrior.' It tells the tale of a thief who replaces the first-injured and then-deceased Lord Shingen Takeda so as to keep the Lord's many enemies convinced that this military genius still lives.

The American financing came about because of the scale of the final battle sequence, though even that sequence surprises us in how all that money is deployed on the screen. Akira Kurosawa was a master of surprise, among many other things. The cinematography is terrific throughout, whether for that doom-laden final battle or for an eerie dream sequence experienced by the thief or for the shadows-and-silhouettes used to indicate battle throughout.

Kurosawa also pulls off the difficult feat of giving us a movie with only one truly likable character, the thief -- and even he is a flawed creature. There's a certain elegiac quality to the proceedings as we see the warfare of the Middle Ages give way to gunpowder and cannons. But Kurosawa undercuts his elegy with both the brutal realities of combat and with the characterization of those lords and retainers still committed to the old ways: in the end, they are deluded and, in their conduct towards the thief, an ungrateful lot of upper-class pricks.

Of Kurosawa's many films involving pre-20th-century Samurai culture, this may be the least. It's certainly the most intimate, despite that giant battle sequence. Even if the least, it's Kurosawa, which beats the best of most everyone else. Kagemusha haunts one in a more mundane way than the supernaturally tinged Throne of Blood, in a less spectacular way than Ran or Seven Samurai. But it definitely haunts, especially in its last tragic, absurd shot. Highly recommended.

Seven Samurai (1954)

Seven Samurai (1954): written by Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto, and Hideo Oguni; directed by Akira Kurosawa; starring Toshiro Mifune (Kikuchiyo), Takashi Shimura (Shimada), Keiko Tsushima (Shino), Kamatari Fujiwara (Manzo), and Bokuzen Hidari (Yohei): Akira Kurosawa's intimate epic is still one helluva thing 64 years after its first appearance. Haunting images, hectic action, low comedy, quiet character moments -- it's as broad and deep a movie as has ever been made. There's nothing I can add to a discussion of it other than to note that it's swell -- Watch it! Highest recommendation.

Surreal and Hyper-real

The Exterminating Angel (El angel exterminador): written and directed by Luis Bunuel; starring Silvia Pinal (Leticia), Enrique Rambal (Edmundo), Cladio Brook (Julio), Jose Baviera (Leandro), Lucy Gallardo (Lucia), Cesar del Campo (The Colonel), and Augusto Benedico (The Doctor) (1962 - Spanish/Mexican): Luis Bunuel's surreal horror film may be a commentary on fascist Spain, phrased in ways that work both viscerally and metaphorically. It works more generally as a surreal and increasingly nightmarish piece of social commentary.

A dinner party of rich socialites gathers at a mansion. All but one of the servants flee. And then for reasons no one can understand, no one can leave the living room. For weeks or perhaps months. And no one can enter the house, though no one really knows why.

The film follows the events in the living room, with a few scenes outside as crowds wax and wane outside the house. There are lambs in the house, and a bear. It's that kind of party. Food runs out. The prisoners search for water-pipes to tap. People start dying. People start looking for scapegoats. The enigmatic paintings on the closet doors look on. A disembodied hand scuttles around the floor. Or does it?

Bunuel would later note that he wished he could have gone farther into violence and grue, adding at least cannibalism to the mix. The movie feels like a nightmare possessed of a nonetheless meticulous logic, a logic expanded upon as the film draws to a close, and expanded again at the very end. Highly recommended.

Throne of Blood: adapted from William Shakespeare's Macbeth by Hideo Oguni, Shinobu Hashimoto, Ryuzo Kikushima, and Akira Kurosawa; directed by Akira Kurosawa; starring Toshiro Mifune (Taketoki Washizu) and Isuzu Yamada (Lady Washizu) (1957): Kurosawa pretty much built an entire castle on the slopes of Mt. Fuji for his homage to Macbeth. And it's quite a castle. Spider's Web Castle, named for the labyrinthine paths of the forest surrounding it, is impregnable. 

Two of an emperor's most trusted lords put down a rebellion. But on the way through the forest, they encounter a spirit whose prophecies lead Toshiro Mifune's Lord Washizu to murder his emperor and seize the throne for himself, albeit only after being argued into doing so by his increasingly loopy wife. Hey, this is based on Macbeth.

Kurosawa's film revels in smoke and fog and horror suggested for the most part rather than seen. Indeed, it's probably the adaptation of Macbeth that most plays the play as a horror piece. The spirit is creepy and freaky and a lot worse than any three witches I've ever seen. 

Mifune is, as always, spectacular, as is Isuzu Yamada in the Lady Macbeth role. Yamada's chill calculation fractures at the end. Mifune, though, fractures upon meeting the spirit and never stops falling apart until the end of the film -- unlike Shakespeare's Macbeth, Lord Washizu has no moment of clarity at the end. He doesn't even get hand-to-hand combat.

Kurosawa saves his creepiest spectacle for the end, as the trees of Spider's Web Woods march on the castle in the fulfilment of Lord Washizu's destiny. Smoke billows everywhere. Soldiers flee. The trees advance through the smoke. It's beautiful film-making. One sometimes wonders how Kurosawa got certain shots, given the technology of the time -- in certain cases, forced perspective and clever matte-work  do astonishing things. Highly recommended.

The Hustler: adapted from the novel by Walter Tevis by Sidney Carroll and Robert Rossen; directed by Robert Rossen; starring Paul Newman (Eddie Felson), Piper Laurie (Sarah Packard), George C. Scott (Bert Gordon), and Jackie Gleason (Minnesota Fats) (1961): Paul Newman was 36 when The Hustler came out. It didn't necessarily make him a star, but it certainly announced him as being a great American actor. His pool hustler, Eddie Felson, is a nuanced portrayal of desperation and loss and rootlessness. 

Robert Rossen directed the film in an almost neo-Realist manner, at least for American cinema at the time. The dingy pool halls and bus stations and bars look lived-in (for the most part, they are -- there are a few sets, but much of the filming was location filming); the acting is, for the most part, unmelodramatic and recognizably 'modern.' You can see why Martin Scorsese wanted to direct the 1985 sequel, The Colour of Money: Rossen's streets are certainly mean, and George C. Scott's persuasive, treacherous mobster wouldn't be out of place in Goodfellas.

Newman announces his maturity as an actor by playing pool hustler 'Fast' Eddie Felson without accents or histrionics. He's a damaged soul with one great ability, but that ability puts him in situations where he can only be damaged more. He's trapped on the fringes of the underworld if he wants to ply his trade: there is no professional pool player's tour in 1961.

The Hustler doesn't supply the plot beats and schematicism one expects of modern Hollywood dramas. After a rare-for-the-time pre-credits sequence showing us how Felson and his partner hustle people in small-time pool scams, we basically open with an almost endless series of pool games between Felson and New York City's greatest pool player, Minnesota Fats. In the immortal words of somebody, character is revealed by a character's actions.

The bulk of the rest of the film brings Piper Laurie's wounded, enigmatic Sarah into play as a love interest for a devastated Felson. Good things happen. Bad things happen. And eventually the film will have to force Eddie to evaluate whether financial success is, as George C. Scott's mobster tells him, the only thing that defines winners and losers. 

Piper Laurie is terrific as Sarah, who's a lot deeper than she first appears, though perhaps less mysterious than she says. Scott is also terrific, already working that sweaty shoutiness. Gleason underplays Fats throughout -- indeed, he barely speaks at all, but he nonetheless got a Supporting Oscar nomination for this film. Highly recommended.

The World's Worst Bodyguard

Yojimbo (Japanese for "Bodyguard"), directed by Akira Kurosawa, starring Toshiro Mifune (1961): Yojimbo has been remade twice -- once as Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars, starring Clint Eastwood; once as Walter Hill's Last Man Standing, starring Bruce Willis. The original pits a sardonic wandering samurai in 19th century Japan against an entire town of criminals who, through guile and swordplay, the samurai attempts to wipe out. It's interesting how the movie balances slapstick comedy with often portentous drama (wind, rain and fire are occasionally apocalyptic elements) in a way that's peculiar to Kurosawa.

It helps that Mifune's samurai occasionally looks weirdly like Bugs Bunny in a cartoon with a really high bodycount, with a couple of the more comic bad guys filling in for Elmer Fudd. This is pretty much essential viewing, and a much shorter go than Kurosawa's epic masterpiece The Seven Samurai. The translation occasionally slips into hilarity. In response to a dying gangster's "The gates of hell...I'll be waiting for you there!", the samurai exclaims, "What a guy!" I'm not sure why that's so funny, but it really is. Kurosawa's compositional skills amaze throughout, as does his ability to rapidly shift tone from comedy to tragedy. Followed by a sequel, Sanjuro. Highly recommended.