Japan
1957
109 minutes
Black and White
1.33:1
Japanese
190
One of the most celebrated screen adaptations of Shakespeare into film, Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood reimagines Macbeth in feudal Japan. Starring Kurosawa’s longtime collaborator Toshiro Mifune and the legendary Isuzu Yamada as his ruthless wife, the film tells of a valiant warrior’s savage rise to power and his ignominious fall. With Throne of Blood, Kurosawa fuses one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies with the formal elements of Japanese Noh theater to make a Macbeth that is all his own—a classic tale of ambition and duplicity set against a ghostly landscape of fog and inescapable doom.
| Taketoki Washizu | Toshiro Mifune |
| Asaji | Isuzu Yamada |
| Yoshiaki Miki | Minoru Chiaki |
| Yoshiteru | Akira Kubo |
| Kuniharu Tsuzuki | Takamaru Sasaki |
| Kunimaru | Yoichi Tachikawa |
| Noriyasu Odagura | Takashi Shimura |
| Witch | Chieko Naniwa |
| Director | Akira Kurosawa |
| Producer | Shojiro Motoki |
| Screenplay | Shinobu Hashimoto, Hideo Oguni, Akira Kurosawa and Ryuzo Kikushima |
| Cinematography | Asakazu Nikai |
| Art direction | Yoshiro Muraki and Kohei Ezaki |
| Sound | Fumio Yanoguchi |
| Music | Masaru Sato |
Critics commonly describe Throne of Blood as Kurosawa’s adaptation of Macbeth. While this description is certainly not untrue, it hardly begins to suggest the ways in which the film is so much more than a literary adaptation. Kurosawa’s film is a brilliant synthesis...
Director Akira Kurosawa had wanted to make Throne of Blood for some time. “After finishing Rashomon [in 1950] I wanted to do something with Shakespeare’s Macbeth, but just about that time Orson Welles’s version was announced, so I postponed mine.” Kurosawa had long been fond...
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