AKIRA KUROSAWA
(1910 - 1998), Japanese



"It would be hard to imagine the modern American cinema without Kurosawa’s palpable influence, whether in the action staging of Sam Peckinpah, Walter Hill, and Martin Scorsese or the distinctive editing patterns that so clearly set off the films of Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg. And this is no less true of his influence on internationally acclaimed directors ranging from Italy’s Western auteur, Sergio Leone, to Hong Kong’s master of balletic violence, John Woo. The strategic use of slow motion, the transformation of Sergei Eisenstein’s handling of crowd scenes, the use of jump cuts on movement, the intermixing of long takes and montage, have all entered the lexicon of the modern action cinema."
- David Desser, Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

"I was truly fascinated when I saw Kurosawa's movies: The Idiot, Seven Samurai, Rashomon. Kurosawa gave me a joyful surprise by showing his wonderful comprehension of the characters of Ragojin and Muishukin in The Idiot, and I found Seven Samurai very impressive because it was a truly beautiful 'people's movie', by making full use of Japanese people's traditions. Because the most important problem for the cinema artist is to create a 'people's movie'."
-Andrei Tarkovsky

"The term 'giant' is used too often to describe artists. But in the case of Akira Kurosawa, we have one of the rare instances where the term fits."
- Martin Scorsese

Filmography
1943 Sanshiro Sugata
1944 The Most Beautiful
1945 Sanshiro Sugata Part II
1945 The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail
1946 No One Regrets for Our Youth
1947 One Wonderful Sunday
1948 Drunken Angel
1949 The Quiet Duel
1949 Stray Dog
1950 Scandal
1950 Rashomon
1951 The Idiot
1952 Ikiru
1954 Seven Samurai
1955 I Live in Fear
1957 Throne of Blood
1957 The Lower Depths
1958 The Hidden Fortress
1960 The Bad Sleep Well
1961 Yojimbo
1962 Sanjuro
1963 High and Low
1965 Red Beard
1970 Dodesukaden
1975 Dersu Uzala
1980 Kagemusha
1985 Ran
1990 Akira Kurosawa's Dreams
1991 Rhapsody in August
1993 Madadayo

Recommended First Watch: Rashomon

Of what I've seen:

Ikiru
Seven Samurai
Ran
High and Low
Rashomon
Yojimbo
Sanjuro
Throne of Blood
Stray Dog
The Hidden Fortress
Sanshiro Sugata

I think Rashomon is a good choice for first watch.

Rashomon is great!! nothin more i can add really..it's just perfect.

Of what I've seen:

1. Ikiru = 9
2. Rashomon = 8
3. Hidden Fortress = 7
4. Yojimbo = 6
5. Seven Samurai = 5

Someone said I'd probably like High and Low.

Yeah I joined my dad for the second half of Ikiru the other day and for me it's so extremely far ahead of his other stuff it makes me wish he concentrated more on Gendaigeki films, but then I guess that would just be asking Kurosawa not to be Kurosawa.

It really doesn't seem like a Kurosawa movie, but it's definitely a movie that grows on you, I almost fell asleep the first time I saw it, but afterwards it became ingrained in my mind and now I make it a habit to watch it once a year.

dude, you have to see "dersu uzala"... it is also very different from most of his other movies, but it's excellent, i think you'd like it too, along with "high and low" which i also endorse.

I don't speak no freaky deaky Japanese, which one is that?

Dersu Uzala is his Russian collaboration work or something like that.That's what I remember from his Wikipedia. article

I'm going to have to watch all his films one day. They are just so hard to get around here. Maybe I should just torrent them. .

Hmm, wonder why it's not put up here, it is directed by him.

It is there and bolded too.

That wasn't there before, I looked at the list four times, they just added it, the slippery little fucks.

We did no such thing.

Fuck your mother.