How to Improve Your Movie Literacy with Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) was a Japanese movie director whose movies were enjoyed all over the world. Although he made over 30 movies with a wide range of themes and settings to considerable acclaim, he humbly claimed always to be a student of movies trying to learn and understand more about how they work.

Late in life, Kurosawa considered Ran as his best movie. However, several of his movies have been influential in many different ways. The subjectivity of recollections about an event witnessed by different observers is now sometimes named The Rashomon Effect after Kurosawa’s Rashomon. The Hidden Fortress provided inspiration for the Star Wars series of movies. Seven Samurai may be Kurosawa’s best loved movie, and was 17th in the critic’s 2012 Sight & Sound poll of best all-time movies.

Fantasy screen worlds in feudal Japan, contemporary settings, current topics, Shakespeare or Dostoyevsky, Kurosawa was at home everywhere.

This introduction to Kurosawa provides the student with a quick but thorough exposure to this talented artist.