kurosawa akira reinvention of the samurai genre. transition: films after 1970 frustrating period...

Kurosawa Akira

Reinvention of the Samurai Genre

Transition: Films after 1970

• Frustrating period after Akahige (1965) - aborted projects and forced inactivity

• Slump and depression of the Japanese film industry

• High budget, long shooting schedule, perfectionism


• Co-director of the 20th Century Fox film, Tora, Tora, Tora with Richard Fleisher.

• Only Hollywood could finance Kurosawa’s projects, but even Hollywood shied away from him.

• Kurosawa replaced by Fukasaku Kinji


• Dodesuka-den (1970) -

• First colour film

• (Not funny) comedy on

people in a slum.

• Poignant and warm depiction of a mentally retarded boy and a group of people in the slum.

• Sympathetic views on eccentric common people

• Financial failure and attempted suicide


• Invited by the Soviet

government to make a

film on a Siberian

native and a Soviet

explorer, and the de-

velopment of mutual

respect and friendship

between the two of totally different backgrounds

• Grand Prix at the Moscow Film Festival and the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Film

Kurosawa’s Last Films• Kagemusha (1980) - the

first Samurai film in 14 years.

• When a powerful warlord, Takeda Shingen, was shot and fatally wounded, the generals of the Takeda clan covered up his death by letting a petit thief, Shingen’s spitting-image, impersonate the dead lord.

Kurosawa’s Last Films

• Miraculously the kagemusha managed to fool both the enemies and the clansmen of the Takedas, the wife, the concubines, the grandson of Shingen and along the years he even began to grow into a real samurai. But he couldn’t fool the horse that only the late Shingen could ride and his true identity is exposed.


• A humanist drama and historical epic• An opportunistic thief - assumption of the

appearance and the soul of the leader whom he impersonates.

• Late pessimism - cruelly thrown out of the castle when his service is no longer needed - human being dispensable and disposable.


• ‘Kagemusha is only a shadow. While the shadow of a man cannot desert that man, the shadow stops existing when the man has gone.’

• Doom, feudalism, class society and human waste

• Dark realization in Kurosawa’s humanism


• Reinvention of the (samurai film) genre that he helped create in the 50s and 60s, while keeping its basic narrative and visual idioms.

• Great stories in which characters find truth about man and life - growing up and obtaining enlightenment

Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films

• Meticulous design and aesthetically calculated composition

• Placing human figures against the massive landscape - early influence from John Ford and American films


• Mise-en-scène frequently employed

• A vast expanse of the horizon with extreme long shots of running horses


• 200 water colours - storyboards

• The script completed but nobody could or wanted to finance his film - concretization and visualization of Kagemusha through storyboards over one year.


• The use of water colours and drawings as blue prints for his mise-en-scène (set and costume designs, camera positioning, lighting and colour cordinations)


• External details and precise relationships between figures and between figures and objects.


• Scenes shot with multiple cameras• Kurosawa’s signature filming method: filming

and actions continue uninterrupted (without cuts) as they are shot by multiple cameras.

• Complicated editing - the footage later edited into a complicated series of shots.


• A new important dimension in reinventing the Samurai genre - COLOURS

• Experimenting with colours for aesthetic and symbolic effects in the manner that a painter does.

• Studio lights projected on the back screen


• ‘Unnatural’ natural phenomenon – ‘unnatural’ natural colours


• Exaggerated natural colour - backlight in location shooting


• A shot dominated by pale orange


• The next shot dominated by blue purple

• Poetry of colours


• Symphony of colours - generals worn kimonos of different colours


• Uses of filters• Expressionistic and symbolic uses of

colours


• Blue night with snow• Natural phenomena frequently represented


• Strong wind and choppy lake water

• The reflection of the unsettled sentiment of characters


• Strong wind - Lord Takeda Shingen dies in his carriage

Kurosawa’s Last Films • Ran (1985) – Kurosawa’s last samurai epic, a rare blockbuster film.

• Hidetora Jumonji at the age of 70 decides to retire as clan chief and divides his territory into three for his three sons. He announces that he only keeps his ceremonial title and the heraldry of his clan.


• While the two sons, Taro and Jiro, flatter their father, the youngest son, Saburo, tries to warn him of his folly to expect his three sons to remain loyal. Enraged at Saburo’s honesty,

he vanishes his youngest son.

As Saburo predicted, Taro

and Jiro conspire to deprive

their father of everything

including his title and banner.


• Not exactly the adaptation of King Lear but inspired by it

• Lear elements - dividing the kingdom among three children; two elder children flatter and betray the king; the youngest one is honest and respects the king but misunderstood and vanished


• The king’s accompaniment - a fool; the king vanishes the most loyal subject (Kent) but the latter continues to supports the former; blinding of Duke Gloucester; Dover cliff

• Differences - gender, more history to characters


• For Kurosawa, Kagemusha was a dress rehearsal for Ran.

• Plenty of features found also in Kagemusha - narrative, visual styles and themes.


• After being betrayed his sons and experiencing sufferings, Hidetora comes to find truth like King Lear does.

• The tone is a lot darker than the earlier films: tragedy of the true Shakespearean scale


• Highly contrived composition

• Symmetrical design

• Formalistic mise-en-scène


• Systematic uses of colours

• Taro’s army - yellow

• Jiro’s - red

• Saburo’s - blue


• Shot with multiple cameras and slow motions

• Dynamic effects - one of the greatest restaging of a battle in cinema history

kurosawa akira reinvention of the samurai genre. transition: films after 1970 frustrating period...

Documents

kurosawas projects

kurosawas humanismkurosawas

samurai film genre

film concretization

horsesvisual styles

enlightenment visual

moscow film festival

century fox film