Rashomon
By March 25, 2002
When Akira Kurosawa made Rashomon, he was a forty-year-old director working near the beginning of a career that would last for 50 years, produce some of the greatest films ever made, and exert a tremendous and Read more »
- Japan
- 1950
- 88 minutes
- Black and White
- 1.33:1
- Japanese
- Spine #138
SYNOPSIS: Brimming with action while incisively examining the nature of truth, Rashomon is perhaps the finest film ever to investigate the philosophy of justice. Through an ingenious use of camera and flashbacks, Kurosawa reveals the complexities of human nature as four people recount different versions of the story of a man’s murder and the rape of his wife. Toshiro Mifune gives another commanding performance in the eloquent masterwork that revolutionized film language and introduced Japanese cinema to the world.
Cast & CreditsOpen
Cast
| The Bandit | Toshiro Mifune |
| The Woman | Machiko Kyo |
| The Man | Masayuki Mori |
| The Woodcutter | Takashi Shimura |
| The Priest | Minoru Chiaki |
Credits
| Director | Akira Kurosawa |
| Producer | Jingo Minoura |
| Scenario | Akira Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto |
| Based on two stories by | Ryunosuke Akutagawa |
| Cinematography | Kazuo Miyagawa |
| Art director | So Matsuyama |
| Music | Fumio Hayasaka |
| Lighting | Kenichi Okamoto |
Disc Features
- New high-definition transfer, with restored image and sound
- Commentary by Japanese film historian Donald Richie
- Video introduction by Robert Altman
- Excerpts from The World of Kazuo Miyagawa, a documentary film about Rashomon’s cinematographer
- Reprints of the Rashomon source stories, Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s “In a Grove” and “Rashomon”
- Akira Kurosawa on Rashomon: a reprinted excerpt from his book Something Like an Autobiography
- Optional English-dubbed soundtrack
- Theatrical trailer
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition
From the CurrentView the Current »
Film Essays
Akira Kurosawa on Rashomon
By February 25, 2002
[Note: in Japan, it is customary to refer to a person with their last name first. We have retained this practice in the below excerpt from Kurosawa’s text.] The gate was growing larger and Read more »
Rashomon
By June 25, 1989
Three men seek shelter from the rain under the ruined gate of the ancient city of Kyoto. There is nothing to do but talk, about a topic which torments two of the wayfarers, who have just been witnesses in a police Read more »
Features
Remembering Kurosawa
By December 09, 2009
Not that he himself wanted to be remembered. Rather, he wanted his work to be remembered. He once wrote: “Take ‘myself,’ subtract ‘movies,’ and the result is ‘zero.’” It was as though he thought Read more »
News
Kurosawa Returns to Venice
September 01, 2009
March 23, 2010, will mark the centenary of Akira Kurosawa’s birth, and the cinema world is starting to gear up for the celebration. The Venice Film Festival, now in its sixty-sixth edition, will Read more »
Rashomon Returns
May 10, 2009
Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the forest: a “definitive” new restoration of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will premiere at New York’s Film Read more »
Dispatches
Tokyo Journal: Remembering Toshiro Mifune
By September 30, 2008
9 August 2008: I go to the neighborhood theater to see Snow Trail (a.k.a. To the End of the Silver Mountains, a.k.a. Ginrei no haté), a 1946 Senkichi Taniguchi film now revived because Read more »
Clippings
Rashomon Rhapsody
July 17, 2009
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ acclaimed, meticulously restored 35 mm print of Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, which Janus Films is currently touring across the country, opens today at Baltimore’s Read more »
Rashomon on NPR
November 06, 2008
In Rashomon, there may be four plausible versions of the murder, but when Academy Film Archive director Michael Pogorzelski began overseeing a brand-new digital restoration of the film, he could locate only Read more »
