Akira Kurosawa's 10 Essential Movies
1. Drunken Angel (1948)
2. Rashomon (1950)
2. Rashomon (1950)
3. Ikiru (1952)
4. Seven Samurai (1954)
5. Throne of Blood (1957)
6. The Hidden Fortress (1958)
7. The Bad Sleep Well (1960)
8. High and Low (1963)
9. Stray Dog (1949)
10. Ran (1985)
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"It would
be hard to imagine the modern American cinema without Kurosawa’s palpable
influence, whether in the action staging of Sam Peckinpah, Walter Hill, and
Martin Scorsese or the distinctive editing patterns that so clearly set off the
films of Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg. And this is
no less true of his influence on internationally acclaimed directors ranging
from Italy’s Western auteur, Sergio Leone, to Hong Kong’s master of balletic
violence, John Woo. The strategic use of slow motion, the transformation of
Sergei Eisenstein’s handling of crowd scenes, the use of jump cuts on movement,
the intermixing of long takes and montage, have all entered the lexicon of the
modern action cinema."
― David Desser (Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film, 2006)
― David Desser (Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film, 2006)
"If in the more deliberately humanist dramas his sentimentality seems sometimes contrived and maudlin, his feel for action and his concern for historical authenticity reveal a talent that both delights in and transcends genre limitations. Certainly, his best work merges psychological precision, narrative subtlety and visual bravura to extraordinary effect."
― Geoff Andrew (The Film Handbook, 1989)
"Like his counterparts and most admired models, Jean Renoir, John Ford, and Kenji Mizoguchi, Kurosawa has taken his cinematic inspirations from the full store of world film, literature, and music. And yet the completely original screenplays of his two greatest films, Ikiru and Seven Samurai, reveal that his natural story-telling ability and humanistic convictions transcend all limitations of genre, period and nationality."
― Audie Bock (International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, 1991)
"The current awareness of Japanese cinema in the West began with Kurosawa, even if he has now been surpassed... Despite his appetite for disparate subjects in the 1950s, his period films look insubstantial against Mizoguchi's, just as Rashomon's debate on truth is trite beside Ugetsu. As to the contemporary Japanese experience, Kurosawa now trails behind a new generation."
― David Thomson (The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 2002)
"A great director of wit, irony, and passion, Kurosawa has lensed some of the greatest Japanese films."
― William R. Meyer (The Film Buff's Catalog, 1978)
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Akira Kurosawa's 10 Favourite Movies
1. The Gold Rush (1925) by Charlie Chaplin
2. Lawrence of Arabia (1962) by David Lean
3. The 400 Blows (1959) by François Truffaut
4. The Godfather Part II (1974) by Francis Ford Coppola
5. La Grande Illusion (1937) by Jean Renoir
6. The Third Man (1949) by Carol Reed
7. Barry Lyndon (1975) by Stanley Kubrick
8. La Strada (1954) by Federico Fellini
9. Fitzcarraldo (1982) by Werner Herzog
10. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) by Milos Forman
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