Kurosawa, Akira

▪ 1999

      Japanese film director (b. March 23, 1910, Tokyo, Japan—d. Sept. 6, 1998, Tokyo), became one of the giants of world cinema after introducing such Japanese films as Rashomon and Seven Samurai in the early 1950s. Kurosawa worked briefly and unsuccessfully as a commercial artist before landing a job as an assistant director with the PCL film company in 1936, becoming a director in 1943. His films revealed a strong Hollywood influence, particularly in their vigorous narrative drive; he spoke openly of his admiration for American films, especially those of John Ford. International notice came with Rashomon (1950), a study of the relativity of truth as demonstrated by four widely varying accounts of the same incident. Playing the leading role in the film was Toshiro Mifune, who reigned as Japan's greatest film star through his many collaborations with Kurosawa. Kurosawa's masterpiece, Seven Samurai (1954), was an epic account of a group of warriors who were greatly outnumbered while defending a rural village against pillaging bandits. Celebrated for its gallery of memorable characters, its masterful orchestration of physical movement, the stirring intensity of its action, and the poetry of its images of peace and life amid the savagery of violence and death, Seven Samurai was consistently ranked among the greatest films ever made. Some of Kurosawa's other notable credits include Ikiru (1952), Throne of Blood (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958), Yojimbo (1961), High and Low (1963), Dersu Uzala (1975), and Kagemusha (1980). By the mid-1960s Kurosawa's films had declined in both popular and critical appeal, and he found it difficult to find financial backing for his ambitious projects; the negative reception of Dodeskaden (1970) led to a suicide attempt. Kurosawa made films only sporadically over the rest of his career but realized an artistic dream with Ran (1985), an extensive treatment of the King Lear story set in Japan's Shogun era. Known as "the Emperor" for his autocratic manner on the set, Kurosawa was one of the greatest masters of storytelling through physical action—the Hollywood style par excellence. Several of his samurai films were remade in the West as westerns, notably Seven Samurai as The Magnificent Seven (1960) and Yojimbo as A Fistful of Dollars (1964).

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