Kurosawa's Best
April 2, 2005
Besides “Kagemusha”, which would place high on this list, here are my choices for Kurosawa’s best films.
10. No Regrets For Our Youth (’46): Arguably Kurosawa’s first great post-war film, starring the luminous beauty Setsuko Hara, and a prime example of the Golden Age of Japanese cinema.
9. Stray Dog (’49): Many consider this gritty noir about a rookie cop who loses his gun in the Tokyo ghetto, to be the director’s first true masterpiece; certainly it’s the precursor to a remarkable decade.
8. The Hidden Fortress (’57): A comedic samurai picture, notable for its black and white compositions, including a huge bonfire sequence, and because it served as inspiration for the plot of George Lucas’ “Star Wars” twenty years later.
7. High and Low (’62): Not all that well known, and considered the last great film he would make before the troublesome seventies, but a ripping good detective mystery, which is also available through Criterion.
6. Yojimbo (’61): Incredibly famous, and oft copied samurai comedy starring the great Toshiro Mifune as a wandering Ronin playing both sides of a feud. The sequel, 1962’s “Sanjuro” shared “Yojimbo’s” visual style- crisp and intense deep focus in stunning black and white.
5. Ran (’85): Kurosawa’s famed dream project- “King Lear” as a dying Japanese warlord, and the empire he turns over to his son. Like “Kagemusha”, Tatsuya Nakadai plays the lead, and delivers a sad and mesmerizing performance.
4. Throne of Blood (’55): The best adaptation of “Macbeth”, once again re-imagined to ancient feudal Japan, where an emperor (Mifune), is haunted by the ghosts of his victims. The arrow-filled finale is justly famous.
3. Ikiru (’51): Without a doubt Kurosawa’s best non-samurai drama, starring regular Takashi Shimura as a dying bureaucrat intent to make a difference in his final months of life. Uplifting and masterfully structured; the real deal.
2. Rashomon (’50): Kurosawa credits the award this film won at Venice as the launching point of his career, after lesser known films “Scandal” and “The Idiot” failed to impressed critics. Indeed, “Rashomon”, with its twisting narrative, telling four different versions of one potential rape/murder on a sunny afternoon in the forest, made a star out of its director and lead, Toshiro Mifune, and won the Foreign Film Oscar in 1950. Since then it has become a staple of film history classes worldwide.
1. Seven Samurai (’54): Three and a half hours of flawless filmmaking about a varied bunch of samurai protecting a village from thieves. Humanity and action have never been so intertwined as they are here, with pathos and humor mixed with intense battle scenes, often in torrential downpour and sloppy mud. Not only is “Seven Samurai” the best non-American western of all time, it may be the greatest Japanese film ever made. Some would argue “Tokyo Story”, and others would argue “Ugetsu”, but the case would have to be pretty impressive against this immaculate study in grace, movement, honor, and community from a truly gifted director.
by Adam Suraf