RASHOMON

Japan, 1951, 83 minutes, Black and White.
Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura.
Directed by Akira Kurosawa.

Rashomon has been hailed as one of the Japanese cinema's classics. It is a masterwork of Akira Kurosawa who pioneered the film industry in post-war Japan (while making features during the war). Most of his films had Samurai settings including this film. His Samurai classic is The Seven Samurai. Others include Sanjuro, Yojimbo. Kurosawa also adapted Shakespeare with Throne of Blood (Macbeth) and Ran (King Lear). He won the Oscar with Dersu Uzala in 1975.

Many of Kurosawa's films were remade in the US. This film became The Outrage (1964) with Paul Newman, Laurence Harvey and Claire Bloom. And its many faceted storytelling and angles on truth has been often imitated. The Seven Samurai became The Magnificent Seven and Yojimbo was the inspiration for Sergio Leone's Fistful of Dollars films.

1. This film is considered a cinema classic. Why? What were its outstanding features? As an example of Japanese cinema? The photography, the style of discovery of truth, the performances? Its value as a fable for insight into human attitudes towards truth?

2. How important was the Samurai background and atmosphere for the film? As a legend? In legendary times and myths? Its importance for the modern generation therefore to understand the truth?

3. Comment on the formalism of the film? The rain background and its final stopping? The discussion at the temple? The presentation of the stories and their counterpoint? The formality of Japanese politeness and form?

4. The significance of the priest, the woodcutter, the observer and their discussion? Does truth emerge from the sharing of stories? The quality of their talk and its dramatic impact in this film? How was the priest a focus for the audience of the values of the film? A symbolic everyman figure for audience identification? The fact that he seemed almost too good? Yet his running away from reality? In what frame of mind did he return to the reality? Could the audience share his experience of the search for truth? What response to the truth did these characters have? Did they want to know it? Curiosity? Emotional reactions to the truth about people? Disillusionment? How important was the ultimate effect and the helping of the child?

5. The significance of the stories in themselves - the effect of seeing the same story with different emphases and facts? Compare each of the stories and try to work out what really happened. The presentation by the bandit of himself? As the best of bandits? What attitude did he have towards the event, the wife, her admiration for him, the husband? Why did the wife present herself as noble? Her interpretation of the others and presentation to people of her own defence? Was the presentation of the husband's story convincing, via the medium? How nobly did he present himself and his condemnation of wife and bandit? The impact of the woodcutter's story and the presentation of the people as fatuous and even ridiculous? What was your response to the stories as they unfolded, as you could compare them with each other, with the final almost objective story?

6. Why did each of the characters try to say the best about himself or herself? Is this human nature? Even the woodcutter telling the story to present himself in the best light?

7. What did the film have to say about truth? Objectivity, subjectivity?

8. What did the film have to say about human nature and the truth? Man's inability to tell the truth? With the fact that he does not seek the truth, but only what suits himself?

9. Comment on the detail of the black and white photography, the different presentations visually of the stories to give emphases. Can you now see why this is a cinema masterpiece?