Shichinin no samurai (Seven Samurai) 1954 - Unanimously hailed as one of cinema's greatest masterpieces

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IMDB Rating: 8,7

Director: Akira Kurosawa
Main Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Tsushima, Yukiko Shimazaki, Daisuke Kato

"Widely considered one of the greatest films ever made, Seven Samurai was both the apex of Akira Kurosawa's long career and the high-water mark of the Japanese period drama. The film's action rivets the viewer in spite of the three-hour-plus running time: the battle sequences, among the best ever filmed, are immediate and visceral; and the characters are complex and so well-rendered that the viewer grieves when one dies. Like few other historical films, it captures not only the physical look of the time but also its essence. Like Jean Renoir's masterpieces Grand Illusion (1937) and The Rules of the Game (1939), Seven Samurai illustrates the collapse of social distinctions and the growing irrelevance of old traditions in dangerous and chaotic times. Kurosawa questions the division between samurai and bandit, between good and evil. In one scene, peasant-born Kikuchiyo heatedly argues that the samurai have been abusing and exploiting the peasants for centuries. In this framework, the samurais' acts of bravery, selflessness, and honor seem absurd, if not pointless. The peasants' choice of the samurai over the bandits is merely one of a lesser evil. Once the bandits are gone, the samurai will no longer be needed. This is underscored in the film's poignant end, when the surviving three samurai leave the village, receiving neither acclaim nor reward, as the villagers plant rice. American audiences were so impressed with Kurosawa's epic masterpiece that it was remade into John Sturges' Magnificent Seven (1960)." - www.allmovie.com

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Ikiru (Doomed/To live) 1952 - An intensely lyrical and moving film, one of Kurosawa's own favorites

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IMDB Rating: 8,4

Director: Akira Kurosawa
Main Cast: Takashi Shimura, Shin'ichi Himori, Haruo Tanaka, Minoru Chiaki

"This contemporary drama from Akira Kurosawa, better known for such sweeping samurai epics as The Seven Samurai (1954), is arguably his best film and the most articulate vision of his existential philosophy. The film's protagonist seems to spring directly from the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre or Leo Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych: a tragic, pathetic figure who has so immersed himself in daily routine that he never learned to live. Only when confronted with his own imminent demise does he give his live meaning by building a playground over an open sewer in an impoverished section of town. The film is structured in a peculiar bifurcated arrangement: it begins as a straightforward plot that, halfway through, shifts into a fragmented narrative recounted in flashbacks by mourners at Watanabe's funeral. In the second half, we witness Watanabe's dogged struggle through the lenses of his baffled co-workers' own unexamined lives. Initially viewing his efforts with suspicion if not contempt, his workers fail to give Watanabe any credit for his single-handed effort to build the park. This section of Ikiru becomes compelling and ironic thanks to Kurosawa's deft depiction of Watanabe's inner state in the first half. Ikiru opens with an X-ray of Watanabe-a literal manifestation of his interior world. The rest of the section, through a tour-de-force of impressionistic and expressionistic cinematic devices, shows Watanabe's slow awakening from his quarter-century stupor to learn what it is to live. Takeshi Shimura delivers a staggering performance as Watanabe; his large pleading eyes and hangdog face burn a haunting image in the viewer's mind long after the film ends. The emotional force of Ikiru leaves the viewer feeling both transformed by Watanabe's evolution and contemplative about one's own life." - www.allmovie.com

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Rashomon 1950 - A highly influential world-cinema masterpiece

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IMDB rating: 8,4

Director: Akira Kurosawa
Main Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura

"Rashomon's winning the Golden Lion in the 1951 Venice Film Festival is one of the key events of world cinema. Not only did it establish director Akira Kurosawa as one of the masters of the medium, but it compelled European and American audiences to look seriously at non-Western cinemas. Without Rashomon, the international critical successes of Kenji Mizoguchi, Satyajit Ray, and others are difficult to imagine. The film's structure, which replays the same event though different characters' eyes, layers ambiguity atop ambiguity. The film comes precariously close to nihilism - the denial of all objective truth and the utter senselessness of existence. Yet Kurosawa pulls back from the abyss in the film's final moments. Though most of Rashomon is adapted from two short stories by famously misanthropic Japanese author Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Kurosawa himself penned the final sequence, an elegant summation of his signature humanism. The truth may be inscrutable, even unknowable, Kurosawa argues, but hope and compassion remain. This vision struck a chord in European audiences for whom the horrors of war were still fresh and the existentialist philosophies of Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus were gaining popularity. Kurosawa's dynamic editing and swaggering camerawork seemed vibrant and sophisticated for a national cinema thought at the time to be second-rate, and the film proved influential to several generations of filmmakers. Ingmar Bergman included a sequence in The Virgin Spring (1960) strongly reminiscent of the film's most memorable sequences - the woodcutter's walk through the forest - and Alain Resnais acknowledged Rashomon's influence on the bold plot structure and existential content of his art-house classic Last Year at Marienbad (1961). In both artistic achievement and historical importance, Rashomon remains one of the masterpieces of cinema." - www.allmovie.com

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Nora inu (Stray dog) 1949 - A stunning piece of international film noir

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IMDB rating: 7,8

Director: Akira Kurosawa
Main Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Keiko Awaji, Eiko Miyoshi

"In his third film with Kurosawa, Toshiro Mifune plays young police detective Murakami. One summer day on a crowded bus in Tokyo, his gun is stolen by a pickpocket. Rather than face the shame of reporting his gun missing, he chooses to go out and find it himself (there were not many weapons on the streets of Tokyo immediately following WWII). While trying to locate the gun, he discovers an entire criminal underworld. He is eventually helped on his journey by superior officer Sato (Takashi Shimura), who seems to suggest that the young detective is indulging in his own criminal desires. The search becomes even more desperate when Murakami finds out that his gun has been used in several crimes, including murder. He then develops an obsession with finding both the gun and the killer." - www.allmovie.com

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