“One thing that distinguishes Akira Kurosawa is that he didn’t make a masterpiece or two master-pieces, he made, you know, eight masterpieces.”

That was how Francis Ford Coppola, one of the biggest names in Western movie-making, described Akira Kurosawa.

And to name the world filmmakers who were either influenced or marvelled at Kurosawa’s genius as a celluloid storyteller, one has to go through a breathtaking list – Ingmar Bergman, Bernardo Bertolucci, Robert Altman, Sidney Lumet, Sam Peckinpah, Roman Polanski, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Zhang Yimou...

And then to have four of the greatest movies of the master, Akira Kurosawa, in DVD format released by home video giant Shemaroo Entertainment, especially on the death anniversary which falls today, September 6, is like being on cloud nine for a movie buff like yours truly. The four Kurosawa masterpieces which have been released are – Roshomon (1950), Ran (1985), The Quiet Duel (1949) and Mandadayo (1993), all international award winners.

Solemn childhood

Akira Kurosawa was born to Isamu and Shima Kurosawa on March 23, 1910. He was the youngest of eight children born to the Kurosawas in a suburb of Tokyo.

In primary school, Kurosawa was encouraged to draw by a teacher who took an interest in mentoring his talents. His two older brothers, Heigo and Tachikawa also had a profound impact on him. Heigo was very intelligent and won several academic competitions, but also had a dark side. In 1923, the Great Kanto earthquake destroyed Tokyo and left 100,000 people dead. In the wake of this event, Heigo, 17, and Akira, 13, made a walking tour of the devastation. Corpses of humans and animals were piled everywhere. When Akira would attempt to turn his head away, Heigo urged him not to. According to Akira, this experience would later instruct him to look at a frightening thing head on and thus, defeat its ability to cause fear.

When Akira Kurosawa was in his early 20s, his older brother Heigo committed suicide. Four months later, the oldest of Kurosawa’s brothers also died, leaving Akira as the only surviving son at the age of twenty- three.

Kurosawa’s wife was actress Yoko Yaguchi. He had two children with her – a son named Hisao and a daughter named Kazuko.

In 1936, Kurosawa learned about an apprenticeship programme for directors. He was hired and worked as an assistant director to Kajiro Yamamoto. After his directorial debut with Sanshiro Sugata (1943), his next few films were made under the watchful eye of the wartime Japanese government and sometimes (The Most Beautiful, 1944, Judo Saga 2,1945), contained nationalistic themes.

His first post-war film No Regrets for Our Youth (1946), by contrast, is critical of the old Japanese regime and is about the wife of a Left-wing dissident who is arrested for his political leanings. Kurosawa made several more films dealing with contemporary Japan, most notably Drunken Angel (1948) and Stray Dog (1949).

However, it was the period film Rashomon (1950), which led to him being known internationally and won him the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.

A distinctive director

Known as the Sensai (meaning ‘teacher’ in Japanese) of cinema, the genius in Kurosawa had a distinctive cinematic technique, which he had developed by the 1950s. He liked using telephoto lenses for the way they flattened the frame. He believed that placing cameras farther away from his actors produced better performances as they would not be conscious of the camera. He also liked using multiple cameras, which allowed him to shoot an action scene from different angles. As with the use of telephoto lenses, the multiple-camera technique also prevented Kurosawa’s actors from “figuring out which one is shooting him”.

Another Kurosawa trademark was the use of weather elements to heighten mood. For example, the heavy rain in the opening scene of Rashomon and the final battle in Seven Samurai (1954); the intense heat in Stray Dog; the cold wind in Yojimbo (The Bodyguard, 1961); the snow in Ikiru (To Live, 1952); and the fog in Throne of Blood (1957).

Kurosawa also liked using frame wipes, sometimes, cleverly hidden by motion within the frame, as a transition device.

He was known as Tenno, literally ‘Emperor’, for his dictatorial directing style. He was a perfectionist who spent enormous amounts of time and effort to achieve the desired visual effects.

In Rashomon, he dyed the rain water black with calligraphy ink in order to achieve the effect of heavy rain, and ended up using up the entire local water supply in creating the rainstorm.

In the final scene of Throne of Blood, in which lead actor Mifune was shot by arrows, Kurosawa used real arrows shot by expert archers from a short range, landing within centimetres of Mifune’s body.

In Ran (1985), an entire castle set was constructed on the slopes of Mt Fuji, only to be burned to the ground in a climactic scene.

Other stories include demanding a stream be made to run in the opposite direction in order to get a better visual effect, and having the roof of a house removed, later to be replaced, because he felt the roof’s presence to be unattractive in a short sequence filmed from a train.

His perfectionism also showed in his approach to costumes: he felt that giving an actor a brand new costume made the character look less than authentic. To resolve this, he often gave his cast their costumes weeks before shooting was to begin and required them to wear them on a daily basis and ‘bond with them’. In some cases, such as with Seven Samurai, where most of the cast portrayed poor farmers, the actors were told to make sure the costumes were worn down and tattered by the time shooting started.

Unusual among directors, Kurosawa edited his films himself, and that too, during production. After each day’s shooting, he would go to the cutting room and cut the dailies.

Widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers of his generation, Kurosawa directed 30 films in a career that spanned 50 years. In 1989, he was awarded the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement “for cinematic accomplishments that have inspired, delighted, enriched and entertained worldwide audiences and influenced filmmakers throughout the world.”

Aesthetic inspirations

A notable feature of Kurosawa’s films is the breadth of his artistic influences. Some of his plots are based on William Shakespeare’s works: Ran is loosely based on King Lear, Throne of Blood is based on Macbeth, while The Bad Sleep Well (1960) parallels Hamlet. Kurosawa also directed film adaptations of Russian literary works, including The Idiot (1951), by Dostoevsky and The Lower Depths (1957), from the play by Maxim Gorky. Ikiru was inspired by Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Dersu Uzala (1975) was based on the 1923 memoir of the same title by Russian explorer Vladimir Arsenyev. Story lines in Red Beard (1965) can be found in The Insulted and Humiliated by Dostoevsky.

A great influence

Kurosawa was such a huge influence on filmmakers that several of his films had been remade by Hollywood filmmakers. Seven Samurai was remade as The Magnificent Seven (1960) and Rashomon was remade by Martin Ritt in 1964’s The Outrage.

Yojimbo was unofficially remade as the Sergio Leone western A Fistful of Dollars (1964), and was remade as the prohibition-era film Last Man Standing (1996).

Kurosawa was an acknowledged influence on George Lucas’s Star Wars films.

Having only seen Seven Samurai from Kurosawa’s oeuvre, Federico Fellini still thought Kurosawa was the “the greatest living example of what an author of the cinema should be.”

Graceful decline

After an attempted suicide bid in the later part of his life, Kurosawa went on to make several more films, although he had great difficulty in obtaining domestic financing despite his international reputation. His last film, Mandadayo (Not yet ) was a reflection of his own old age musings.

Kurosawa died of a stroke in Setagaya, Tokyo, at age 88 on September 6, 1998.

To coincide with the 100th anniversary of Kurosawa’s birth, his unfinished documentary Gendai no Noh will be completed and released in 2010. Only about 50 minutes of footage exist, but to finish the film, an additional hour will be shot using Kurosawa’s original screenplay.

In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Kurosawa’s birth, the AK100 Project was created, which aims to expose the next generation, and all people everywhere, to the light and spirit of Akira Kurosawa and the wonderful world he created.

The Anaheim University launched the Akira Kurosawa School of Film at Beverly Hills, USA on March 23, this year, which would have been Kurosawa’s 99th birthday.

On this day of the 12th death anniversary of the maestro, we pay homage to the genius of Akira Kurosawa.

Partha Pratim Hazarika