We live in a cruel and indifferent universe, so we must act with kindness and charity. That’s the dominant theme of Akira Kurosawa’s works. But that theme was never stated as clearly, as forcefully, or as didactically as in Red Beard, the final work of Kurosawa’s most productive and artistically successful period. I don’t remember … Continue reading Kurosawa Diary, Part 22: Red Beard

After two detours into early Kurosawa films I couldn’t catch the first time around (see this and that), I’m finally back to the main point of what this Kurosawa Diary project: an examination of all of his films in chronological order. And what a relief that is—returning from the uneven (and often dreadful) quality of … Continue reading Kurosawa Diary, Part 21: High and Low

It’s official! I have now seen every film Akira Kurosawa ever made. I still have nine films left in my Kurosawa Diary project, but that’s mostly about revisiting films I’ve seen before, this time in chronological order. Last night at the Pacific Film Archive, I caught a double-bill of The Most Beautiful and The Men … Continue reading Kurosawa Diary, Part 20: The Most Beautiful and The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail

I’m making an exception to the chronological format of this diary to cover Kurosawa’s first and third films as a director. I briefly discussed his first film, Sanshiro Sugata, in my first diary entry. I didn’t discuss the second because until last night, I had never seen it. I saw both movies last night at … Continue reading Kurosawa Diary, Part 19: Sanshiro Sugata Parts I & II

Akira Kurosawa only made two sequels in his career, and only one after he reached his artistic maturity. Sanjuro didn’t start out as a sequel to Yojimbo, but as the earlier movie became box office dynamite, Kurosawa inserted the nameless main character from the first one into the center of his current screenplay. (Well, not … Continue reading Kurosawa Diary, Part 18: Sanjuro

And so we come to Kurosawa at his most entertaining, and his most commercial. Oddly enough for this serious and often didactic auteur, also at his best. On one level, we have one of the most enjoyable action flicks ever made, with rousing swordplay, plenty of moments to cheer the hero, and many laughably inept … Continue reading Kurosawa Diary, Part 17: Yojimbo

Few people know Kurosawa’s dark, contemporary, and suspenseful tale of corruption and revenge—perhaps because it was made around the same time as his three lightest and most entertaining sword-and-kimono flicks. Commercially speaking, it can’t stand up to its predecessor, The Hidden Fortress, or the two action comedies that would follow it, Yojimbo and Sanjuro. But … Continue reading Kurosawa Diary, Part 16: The Bad Sleep Well

If you remember that the Japanese term for what we westerners call a “samurai movie” actually translates closer to “costume picture,” then The Hidden Fortress was the fifth and last such film Akira Kurosawa made in the 1950s. His four previous samurai movies were an existential exploration of the limits of human knowledge (Rashomon), an … Continue reading Kurosawa Diary, Part 15: The Hidden Fortress