Akira Kurosawa: Japan's Master of Cinema

If you are a true fan of cinema, you may have heard of director Akira Kurosawa. He made many amazing films throughout his long career. His influence is still felt in cinema today. His movies were a major influence over Sergio Leone's western films, and his movies also influenced Frances Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, to name a few. Akira Kurosawa is one of my all time favorite directors, so I wished to write a brief article to discuss some of his films.

I think Kurosawa's films can really be broken down into three major phases. I'll label the phases as "Pre-Rashomon", "Rashomon thru Red Beard", and "Post - Red Beard". Sadly many of the films that Kurosawa directed in his early career remain unreleased in America. The films that have been released do show lots of potential, and in fact one of this films, "Stray Dog" is one of my favorite of Kurosawa's. I'm really hoping that more of his early work will be released in America at some point so that we can enjoy some of his early work.

Kurosawa's second phase is really the one that gets the most attention. "Rashomon" was the film that really made the world take notice of Kurosawa. The film featured a very original way of telling the story, as the film is told from multiple, conflicting perspectives. The story is still exciting this day, and the directing was amazing. Kurosawa followed this film up with "The Idiot", which many people view as one of Kurosawa's lesser films. However the next film, "Ikiru" is another that is considered a classic. "Seven Samurai" is the film that is widely considered to be his master work. The film wonderfully shot, and features a great mix of fantastic characters. The film's story is about a group of poor farmers who keep getting raided yearly. They finally get fed up and decide to hire a group of Samurai to help them out. The story has been retold a few times, but nothing comes close to the original.