Description
Translated by Audie E. Bock. "A first rate book and a joy to read.... It's doubtful that a complete understanding of the director's artistry can be obtained without reading this book.... Also indispensable for budding directors are the addenda, in which Kurosawa lays out his beliefs on the primacy of a good script, on scriptwriting as an essential tool for directors, on directing actors, on camera placement, and on the value of steeping oneself in literature, from great novels to detective fiction." --Variety "For the lover of Kurosawa's movies...this is nothing short of must reading...a fitting companion piece to his many dynamic and absorbing screen entertainments." --Washington Post Book World
About the Author
Rashomon(1950),The Seven Samurai(1954), andRan(1985), set in feudal Japan of directorAkira Kurosawa, greatly influenced American and European filmmaking.This producer, screenwriter, and editor, regarded of the most important and influential in the history of cinema, directed thirty in a career, spanning 57 years.Following a brief stint as a painter, Kurosawa entered the industry in 1936. After years of working as an assistant and scriptwriter, he made his debut in 1943 during World War II with the popular action filmSanshiro Sugata, also known asJudo Saga. After the war, the critically acclaimedDrunken Angel(1948), in which Kurosawa cast then-unknown actorToshirō Mifunein a starring role, cemented the reputation of the most important young filmmakers in Japan. The two men went to collaborate on another 15 films.Rashomon, which premiered in Tokyo in August 1950, and which also starred Mifune, on 10 September 1951 surprisingly won the golden lion at the Venice film festival and was subsequently released in Europe and North America. The commercial and critical success opened up western markets for the first time to the products of the industry, which in turn led to international recognition for other artists. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Kurosawa included a number of highly regarded films, such asIkiru(1952) andYojimbo(1961). After the mid-1960s, his much less prolific later work, including his penultimate epic,Kagemusha(1980), continued to win awards, including the Palme d'Or, more often abroad.In 1990, he accepted the academy award for lifetime achievement. Posthumously, AsianWeek magazine and Cable News Network named him "Asian of the century" in the "arts, literature, and culture" category and cited him as "one of the [five] people who contributed most to the betterment of Asia in the past 100 years."
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