one of the most acclaimed international directors of the 20th century with an eight-film series
featuring the works of Akira Kurosawa.
Kicking off the semester-long series is 1950’s “Rashomon,”
the film that made Kurosawa an international sensation. The film explores the
complexities that can arise when you try to assemble the truth from four
different witnesses’ accounts — in this case, the rape of a woman and the
murder of her samurai husband.
Cinematheque has chosen a variety of Kurosawa’s work from
the late ’40s through the early ’60s, exploring his entries to the jidaigeki or
“period drama” genre, as well as contemporary dramas and police thrillers.
“We wanted to be able to give people access to [the films]
they probably think most commonly of with Akira Kurosawa,” said Evan Davis,
programmer for Cinematheque. “We also wanted to give at least a little bit of a
taste of what Kurosawa’s work was like before he became internationally
recognized.”
Other films featured include a mix of Kurosawa’s well-known
classics, like “Seven Samurai” and “Ikiru,” as well as some lesser-known gems
from before the director’s rise to international acclaim, like “Stray Dog”
(“Nora inu”) and “Drunken Angel” (“Yoidore tenshi”).
Kurosawa’s unique sense of style permeates his films. The
director possesses the ability to create artful use of slow motion in films
like “Seven Samurai,” accentuating the gravity of characters’ deaths. He
controls space and staging in films like “Yojimbo” and “High and Low” (“Tengoku
to jigoku”) in a way that makes effective use of every inch of the frame,
delineating space in the film’s digenesis that affects how both the viewer and
the characters understand it.
The entire first half of “High and Low” takes place in a
single apartment, but Kurosawa’s masterful control of space and framing keeps
the film from stagnating. Kurosawa is similarly able to inject a sort of
kinetic quality to his films and is even able to bring energy to somber
offerings, such as “Ikiru.”
Kurosawa has been especially lauded for the way he captures
nature in his films, receiving praise from directors like Francis Ford Coppola
and George Lucas.
“The way that Kurosawa is able to frame his characters in
nature can make them either a part of it or outside of it,” Davis said. “He’s
able to give almost a tactile quality to light falling on leaves in the forest.”
Featured in all but one of the films in Cinematheque’s
series is Kurosawa’s frequent collaborator Toshiro Mifune, a celebrated
Japanese actor who brings tremendous energy and a certain “largeness” to his
characters that completely dominates scenes.
“He’s a very large performer,” Davis said. “He’s larger than
life in a lot of ways, and the characters that he plays require that type of
energy.”
Tatsuya Nakadai, another major figure in Japanese cinema and
frequent collaborator of Kurosawa, also appears in a number of the films in the
series. Nakadai serves as a cooler counterpoint to Mifune’s grandiose energy in
a way that is no less captivating.
All of the films are being presented on high-quality 35mm
prints, with “Roshomon” and “Stray Dog” being presented on sparkling new prints
created by Janus Films, a distributor of foreign and classic films, to
celebrate Kurosawa’s 100th birthday. The eight-film series will be
running throughout the fall semester and begins with “Rashomon” at 7 p.m. on
Friday, Sept. 3. The films will be played at 4070 Vilas Hall, and admission is
free.
