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| We at
HugeReviews.com are all HUGE fans of Mr. Kurosawa's films, so we decided
to honor "The Emperor" in the only way we can. That being
said, welcome to HugeReviews.com's Akira Kurosawa Shrine! |
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Full
body of work &Filmography | Biography
| Filmography | The Seven
Samurai |
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Biography
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Akira Kurosawa was born in Tokyo, Japan on March 23rd 1910. He was the youngest of seven children. He was a lover of Western art styles and Russian literature. His
beloved brother worked in the film industry as a translator for foreign films before he took his own life; an event that would forever haunt Kurosawa.
Perhaps in part to identify with his lost brother, Kurosawa began his own
career in film in 1930 by responding to a newspaper ad. He became an assistant to a Japanese director known as Kajiro Yamamoto. It wasn't long before he was shooting scenes for Yamamoto. Finally, in 1943, Kurosawa made his debut as a director with
Judo Saga. Although not his most memorable work, the film brought him recognition as a promising young director. |
| Kurosawa was directing films in a turbulent time. World War II was raging and his films, to his dismay, were in large part propaganda. As an artist, Kurosawa
longed to make his films without guidelines prescribed by the government. I wasn't until
Drunken Angel in 1948 that Kurosawa could say "In this picture I finally discovered myself." He also discovered his favorite and often used leading man Toshiro
Mifune. |
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| Kurosawa brought Japanese cinema to the global forum when he won the top prize at the Venice film festival, and an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film for
Rashomon in 1951. This was when his career gained momentum. |
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Kurosawa followed Rashomon with a string of successes. At a time when most films depicted a single hero saving the day, Kurosawa's
The Seven Samurai brought the first team of heroes to the big screen. The film was so successful that it would later be remade in America as
The Magnificent Seven. It is considered by many to be
his best film and perhaps one of the finest films ever made. |
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| Sergio Leone was also inspired by Kurosawa when he made
A Fistful of Dollars based on Kurosawa's Yojimbo, and George Lucas credits
The Hidden Fortress for inspiring elements of Star
Wars. Kurosawa's love of literature surfaced in his work when he made feudal-Japanese versions of Shakespeare's Macbeth
(Throne of Blood) and later with King Lear (Ran), as well as Gorky's
The Lower Depths and The Idiot by Dostoevsky. |
| The years that followed were the release of
Red Beard in 1965 were troubled one's. The director now being known as "The
Emporer" faced aborted projects and box office failures. When his film
Dodeska-den bombed, Kurosawa attempted suicide. The only cure for his depression was the success earned by Dersu
Uzala, a Soviet-Japanese production he directed. He
would never again relive the successes of his youth, but by
then he was already a legend. |
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In
1989 he won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Motion
Picture Academy of America. The 72-year-old director stated,
"I like unformed characters. This may be because, no
matter how old I get, I am still unformed myself."
"The Emperor" died in 1998 leaving the motion
picture world the poorer, but his spirit lives on in his
magnificent films.
Akira Kurosawa's talent revolutionized the industry of
filmmaking and inspired almost every director worth knowing
of. He was a genius, an artist, and he understood and
expressed the human condition and the human psyche with the
same skill as his literary idols. He was a genius is
every sense of the word.
-Mark Capitelli |
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