Akira Kurosawa Biography
Akira Kurosawa was born in Tokyo in 1910 and, after studying Western painting and working as an illustrator for some popular magazines, in 1936 he entered the studios of the production company PCL (Photo Chemical Laboratory) where he worked as assistant to Yamamoto Kajirō and wrote some screenplays, an activity that continues throughout his career. In 1943 he made his debut film, Sugata Sanshirō, thus opening the war period of Kurosawa's cinema in which the director, although already revealing his undoubted qualities, was unable to escape the demands of national politics and its dictates, in particularly those relating to the exaltation of loyalty, self-denial, the spirit of sacrifice, the sense of the group.
Kurosawa's war period ends with Tora no oo fumu otokotachi (1945, The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail), an anomalous adaptation of an austere classic of Japanese theatrical literature on the theme of the servant's loyalty to his master. Kurosawa is recognized for having opened the doors of the West to Japanese cinema thanks to the unexpected Golden Lion that his Rashōmon (1950; Rashomon) obtained at the 1951 Venice Film Festival, thus inaugurating a season of important awards attributed to other Japanese films in various international festivals. Belonging to the generation of post-World War II directors most imbued with a humanistic spirit, Kurosawa focuses his work on the character, often a stubborn man fighting against the evils and injustices of society.
The influence of American cinema and Western models is clear, as is, at the same time, the ability to look at the forms of traditional Japanese aesthetics. This variety of sources and forms is, moreover, only one of the many elements that determine the strong tension of Kurosawa's cinema and that gives life to that dynamism which is, perhaps, the director's most important brand of style and poetics. And it is precisely through his rough and uneven editing, the frequent and constant juxtapositions of close-ups and long shots, the alternation of static shots and others full of movement, the connections that play on conflicts of lines and direction, that Kurosawa manages to give life to a very peculiar style equal, in terms of expressive intensity and originality of results, to that of the great masters of the tradition, such as Ozu Yasujirō and Mizoguchi Kenji.
The award obtained by Rashōmon is only the first in a long series of awards given to the director which culminate in the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, awarded to him at the Venice Film Festival in 1982, and in the Oscar, again for Lifetime Achievement, in 1990 .
