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Kurosawa Akira

Kurosawa Akira. Reinvention of the Samurai Genre. Transition: Films after 1970. Frustrating period after Akahige (1965) - aborted projects and forced inactivity Slump and depression of the Japanese film industry High budget, long shooting schedule, perfectionism.

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Kurosawa Akira

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  1. Kurosawa Akira Reinvention of the Samurai Genre

  2. Transition: Films after 1970 • Frustrating period after Akahige (1965) - aborted projects and forced inactivity • Slump and depression of the Japanese film industry • High budget, long shooting schedule, perfectionism

  3. Transition: Films after 1970 • Co-director of the 20th Century Fox film, Tora, Tora, Tora with Richard Fleisher. • Only Hollywood could finance Kurosawa’s projects, but even Hollywood shied away from him. • Kurosawa replaced by Fukasaku Kinji

  4. Transition: Films after 1970 • Dodesuka-den (1970) - • First colour film • (Not funny) comedy on people in a slum. • Poignant and warm depiction of a mentally retarded boy protagonist and a group of people in the slum. • Sympathetic views on eccentric common people • Financial failure and attempted suicide

  5. Transition: Films after 1970 • Invited by the Soviet government to make a film on a Siberian native and a Soviet explorer, and the de- velopment of mutual respect and friendship between the two of totally different backgrounds • Grand Prix at the Moscow Film Festival and the Academy Award for the Best Foreign Film

  6. Kurosawa’s Last Films • Kagemusha (1980) - the first Samurai film in 14 years. • When a powerful warlord, Takeda Shingen, was shot and fatally wounded, the generals of the Takeda clan covered up his death by letting a petit thief, Shingen’s spitting-image, impersonate the dead lord.

  7. Kurosawa’s Last Films • Miraculously the kagemusha managed to fool both the enemies and the clansmen of the Takedas, the wife, the concubines, the grandson of Shingen and along the years he even began to grow into a real samurai. But he couldn’t fool the horse that only the late Shingen could ride and one day his true identity is exposed.

  8. Kurosawa’s Last Films • A humanist drama and historical epic • An opportunistic thief - assumption of the appearance and the soul of the leader whom he impersonates. • Late pessimism - cruelly thrown out of the castle when his service is no longer needed - human being dispensable and disposable.

  9. Kurosawa’s Last Films • ‘Kagemusha is only a shadow. While the shadow of a man cannot desert that man, the shadow stops existing when the man has gone.’ • Doom, feudalism, class society and human waste • Dark realization in Kurosawa’s humanism

  10. Kurosawa’s Last Films • Reinvention of the (samurai film) genre that he helped create in the 50s and 60s, while keeping its basic narrative and visual idioms. • Great stories in which characters find truth about man and life - growing up and obtaining enlightenment

  11. Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films • Meticulous design and aesthetically calculated composition • Placing human figures against the massive landscape - early influence from John Ford and American films

  12. Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films • Mise-en-scène frequently employed • A vast expanse of the horizon with extreme long shots of running horses

  13. Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films • 200 water colours - storyboards • The script completed but nobody could or wanted to finance his film - concretization and visualization of Kagemusha through storyboards over one year.

  14. Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films • The use of water colours and drawings as blue prints for his mise-en-scène (set and costume designs, camera positioning, lighting and colour cordinations)

  15. Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films • External details and precise relationships between figures and between figures and objects.

  16. Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films • Scenes shot with multiple cameras • Kurosawa’s signature filming method: filming and actions continue uninterrupted (without cuts) as they are shot by multiple cameras. • Complicated editing - the footage later edited into a complicated series of shots.

  17. Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films • A new important dimension in reinventing the Samurai genre - COLOUR • Experimenting with colours for aesthetic and symbolic effects in the manner that a painter does. • Studio lights projected on the back screen

  18. Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films • ‘Unnatural’ natural phenomenon - ‘unnatural’ natural colours

  19. Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films • Exaggerated natural colour - backlight in location shooting

  20. Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films • A shot dominated by pale orange

  21. Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films • The next shot dominated by blue purple • Poetry of colours

  22. Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films • Symphony of colours - generals worn kimonos of different colours

  23. Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films • Uses of filters • Expressionistic and symbolic uses of colours

  24. Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films • Blue night with snow • Natural phenomena frequently represented

  25. Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films • Strong wind and choppy lake water • The reflection of the unsettled sentiment of characters

  26. Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films • Strong wind - Lord Takeda Shingen dies in his carriage

  27. Kurosawa’s Last Films • Ran (1985) - Kurosawa’s last samurai epic, a rare blockbuster film. • Hidetora Jumonji at the age of 70 decides to retire as clan chief and divides his territory into three for his three sons. He announces that he only keeps his ceremonial title and the heraldry of his clan.

  28. Kurosawa’s Last Films • While the two sons, Taro and Jiro, flatter their father, the youngest son, Saburo, tries to warn him of his folly to expect his three sons to remain loyal. Enraged at Saburo’s honesty, he vanishes his youngest son. As Saburo predicts that it might happen, Taro and Jiro conspire to deprive their father of everything including his title and banner.

  29. Kurosawa’s Last Films • Not exactly the adaptation of King Lear but inspired by it • Lear elements - dividing the kingdom among three children; two elder children flatter and betray the king; the youngest one is honest and respects the king but misunderstood and vanished

  30. Kurosawa’s Last Films • The king’s accompaniment - a fool; the king vanishes the most loyal subject (Kent) but the latter continues to supports the former; blinding of Duke Gloucester; Dover cliff • Differences - gender, more history to characters

  31. Kurosawa’s Last Films • For Kurosawa, Kagemusha was a dress rehearsal for Ran. • Plenty of features found also in Kagemusha - narrative, visual styles and themes.

  32. Kurosawa’s Last Films • After being betrayed his sons and experiencing sufferings, Hidetora comes to find truth like King Lear does. • The tone is a lot darker than the earlier films: tragedy of the true Shakespearean scale

  33. Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films • Highly contrived composition • Symmetrical design • Formalistic mise-en-scène

  34. Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films • Systematic uses of colours • Taro’s army - yellow • Jiro’s - red • Saburo’s - blue

  35. Visual Styles in Kurosawa’s Last Films • Shot with multiple cameras and slow motions • Dynamic effects - one of the greatest restaging of a battle in cinema history

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