Thank you very much, Alicia (Kozma), for that kind introduction.
It’s a great pleasure as always to be back at the magnificent IU Cinema, especially during its 15th anniversary season. Over that time, it has rapidly developed a reputation as one of the nation’s finest university cinemas, welcoming hundreds of thousands of guests to thousands of programs, and hosting hundreds of visiting filmmakers and scholars. It has become a sanctuary for the study and appreciation of great films and film history and offers the rare opportunity to experience masterworks as they were intended to be seen—projected on the big screen, with pristine visual and audio quality.
So, congratulations once again, Alicia, to you and all your staff, the cinema volunteers, your predecessor Jon Vickers, and the hundreds of others to whom this success is due.
I would also like to gratefully thank the faculty and staff whose gifts in 2017 generously endowed a fund to establish the McRobbie’s Choice Film Series that I curate each semester and for which I give an introduction.
This semester, I am particularly delighted to introduce three films by one of the undisputed giants of world cinema: Akira Kurosawa. Over the coming weeks, we will be screening three of his finest achievements: Throne of Blood from 1957, The Hidden Fortress from 1958, and High and Low from 1963. What will make these screenings special is that these will all be very recently released new 4K restorations of these great works.
Akira Kurosawa
To speak of Akira Kurosawa is to speak of a legendary cinematic force that bridged the East and the West with unparalleled artistry. He was a director who possessed a painter’s eye for composition—indeed, he began his career as a painter—and a novelist’s command of narrative structure. Over a career that spanned five decades and 30 films, Kurosawa revolutionized the way stories were told on screen, influencing generations of filmmakers, including nearly all the greats of modern film. Indeed, he has had very few true peers in all of cinema.
He was often called "The Emperor" within the Japanese film industry, a nickname that referred to his authoritarian directing style, but which also aptly describes his complete command over the medium. He was a perfectionist who demanded total commitment from his cast and crew, often waiting days for the perfect weather conditions to capture a single shot.
While Kurosawa is perhaps best known for Rashomon—the film that introduced Japanese cinema to the Western world when it won the Golden Lion at Venice in 1951—and Seven Samurai, the quintessential action epic, the three films we present in this series showcase the incredible versatility of his genius. They represent three distinct genres: a historical tragedy infused with the supernatural, a rousing widescreen adventure, and a tense, modern-day police procedural. Yet, despite their differences, these films are united by Kurosawa’s humanism, his dynamic editing, and his profound collaboration with the legendary actor Toshiro Mifune, who stars in all three.
Throne of Blood
Tonight, Throne of Blood, released in 1957, will be screened.
It is, quite simply, one of the finest literary adaptations from any culture or any genre ever committed to celluloid. Kurosawa takes William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and transposes it from the foggy moors of Scotland to the foggy slopes of Mount Fuji during Japan’s 150-year-long Warring States period.
What is most striking about Throne of Blood is how Kurosawa translates Shakespeare’s poetic language into pure visual cinema. There is very little dialogue in the film compared to the play. Instead of soliloquies, Kurosawa gives us wind, rain, mist, and the terrifying rustle of the forest. He replaces the psychological verbalization of the West with the stylized, physical expression of the East.
Specifically, Kurosawa drew heavily upon the traditions of Noh theater. You see this in the makeup of the characters, which resembles the fixed masks of Noh, and in the movements of the actors—sliding, gliding, and sudden, explosive stops.
Toshiro Mifune plays the Macbeth figure, Washizu, with a ferocity that is almost animalistic. Yet it is Isuzu Yamada, playing the Lady Macbeth figure, Lady Asaji, who creates the film’s most chilling atmosphere. Her performance is a master class in restraint; she moves with a terrifying stillness, her voice a monotone whisper that drives her husband toward his doom.
The film is visually dominated by fog and wind, creating a world where moral clarity is obscured, and human ambition is as ghostly and transient as the mist itself. And, of course, it culminates in one of the most famous scenes in cinema history: the death of Washizu.
Rejecting special effects, Kurosawa, in a typical use of true realism, had expert archers fire real arrows at Mifune as he ran terrified across the ramparts of the castle. When you see the fear in Mifune’s eyes, you are not watching acting; you are watching a man facing tangible danger. It is a visceral, haunting conclusion to this great work of art.
The Hidden Fortress
Following the dark tragedy of Throne of Blood, Kurosawa immediately and dramatically shifted gears the next year with The Hidden Fortress, which will be screened next Saturday.
If Throne of Blood is a film of claustrophobic interiors and fog, The Hidden Fortress is a film of expansive horizons and blazing sunlight, with a lighter and, at times, comedic touch. It was Kurosawa’s first film shot in the widescreen format—specifically the Japanese equivalent of Cinemascope, Tohoscope—and he used the width of the frame to spectacular effect.
The plot concerns a general, played again by Toshiro Mifune, who must escort a princess across enemy territory to safety, along with the royal gold.
However, Kurosawa’s brilliant touch was to tell this epic story not from the perspective of the hero or the princess, but from the viewpoint of two bickering, greedy, and somewhat cowardly peasants, Tahei and Matashichi. These two characters, constantly arguing and looking for an easy way out, provide a comic counterpoint to the samurai’s stoic code of honor.
It is well documented that this narrative structure—an epic war seen through the eyes of two lowly characters—was a primary inspiration for George Lucas when he wrote the original Star Wars, as he was a huge admirer of Kurosawa. The parallels between the two peasants and the droids C-3PO and R2-D2 are unmistakable, just as the princess in The Hidden Fortress serves as a clear template for Princess Leia.
But The Hidden Fortress stands on its own merits as a masterpiece of pacing and movement. Kurosawa creates a sense of constant motion; the camera tracks, pans, and sweeps across the rocky landscapes. The action sequences are choreographed with a balletic precision, including a remarkable duel with lances, showing Mifune’s extraordinary versatility in the martial arts. It is a film that proved that Kurosawa could command the action genre just as skillfully as he could the literary drama.
High and Low
And finally, in two weeks Kurosawa’s 1963 film High and Low will be screened. After The Hidden Fortress, in the following five years Kurosawa made two more superb movies, Yojimbo and Sanjuro, both set in feudal Japan with Mifune as the samurai master.
But in High and Low he leaves the samurai swords and topknots behind to enter the concrete jungle of post-war Japan. Based on the American crime novel King’s Ransom by Ed McBain, High and Low is a police procedural that evolves into a scathing critique of modern society and class division.
Apparently, the Japanese title, Tengoku to Jigoku, translates literally as “Heaven and Hell," which would seem to far better capture the thematic structure of the film than the English title.
The first half of the film takes place almost entirely in "Heaven"—the high-rise apartment of a wealthy shoe executive, Gondo, played by Mifune, who is engaged in a corporate control struggle. From his window, he looks down upon the city. The apartment is air-conditioned, spacious, and removed from the grit of the streets.
The conflict begins when Gondo receives a ransom call. He believes his son has been kidnapped, but it turns out the kidnapper has mistakenly taken the son of Gondo’s chauffeur. Gondo faces an excruciating moral dilemma: does he pay the ruinous ransom to save the child of an employee, thereby destroying his own career and fortune, or does he refuse and let the child die?
The second half of the film descends into "Hell"—the sweltering, crowded slums of Yokohama where the kidnapper lives. The police investigation that follows is meticulously detailed, showing us the methodical, unglamorous work of detectives tracking down clues.
High and Low remains just as relevant today, 60 years after it was made. It asks difficult questions about the responsibility of the wealthy to the poor, the nature of corporate greed, and the corrosive effects of envy. It has been said that it is a film that combines the tightness of a Hitchcock thriller with the social conscience of Dickens.
These three great films, then, all demonstrate the breadth of Akira Kurosawa’s humanistic vision and his total mastery of the medium. He remains a towering figure of the cinematic art.
So please enjoy tonight’s screening of the first of these, Throne of Blood.
