Akira Kurosawa

Biography

After training as a painter (he storyboards his films as full-scale paintings), Kurosawa entered the film industry in 1936 as an assistant director, eventually making his directorial debut with _Sugata Sanshirô (1943)_ (qv). Within a few years, Kurosawa had achieved sufficient stature to allow him greater creative freedom. _Yoidore tenshi (1948)_ (qv)--"Drunken Angel"--was the first film he made without extensive studio interference, and marked his first collaboration with 'Toshirô Mifune' (qv). In the coming decades, the two would make 16 movies together, and Mifune became as closely associated with Kurosawa's films as was 'John Wayne (I)' (qv) with the films of Kurosawa's idol, 'John Ford (I)' (qv). After working in a wide range of genres, Kurosawa made his international breakthrough film _Rashômon (1950)_ (qv) in 1950. It won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, and first revealed the richness of Japanese cinema to the West. The next few years saw the low-key, touching _Ikiru (1952)_ (qv) (Living), the epic _Shichinin no samurai (1954)_ (qv), the barbaric, riveting Shakespeare adaptation _Kumonosu-jô (1957)_ (qv), and a fun pair of samurai comedies _Yôjinbô (1961)_ (qv) and _Tsubaki Sanjûrô (1962)_ (qv). After a lean period in the late 1960s and early 1970s, though, Kurosawa attempted suicide. He survived, and made a small, personal, low-budget picture with _Dodesukaden (1970)_ (qv), a larger-scale Russian co-production _Dersu Uzala (1975)_ (qv) and, with the help of admirers 'Francis Ford Coppola' (qv) and 'George Lucas (I)' (qv), the samurai tale _Kagemusha (1980)_ (qv), which Kurosawa described as a dry run for _Ran (1985)_ (qv), an epic adaptation of Shakespeare's "King Lear." He continued to work into his eighties with the more personal _Yume (1990)_ (qv), _Hachi-gatsu no rapusodî (1991)_ (qv) and _Maadadayo (1993)_ (qv). Kurosawa's films have always been more popular in the West than in his native Japan, where critics have viewed his adaptations of Western genres and authors ('William Shakespeare (I)' (qv), 'Fyodor Dostoevsky' (qv), 'Maxim Gorky' (qv) and 'Evan Hunter (I)' (qv)) with suspicion - but he's revered by American and European film-makers, who remade _Rashômon (1950)_ (qv) as _The Outrage (1964)_ (qv), _Shichinin no samurai (1954)_ (qv), as _The Magnificent Seven (1960)_ (qv), _Yôjinbô (1961)_ (qv), as _Per un pugno di dollari (1964)_ (qv) and _Kakushi-toride no san-akunin (1958)_ (qv), as _Star Wars (1977)_ (qv).