Word: akira
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...Federico Fellini (“La Strada,” “8 1/2”), Michelangelo Antonioni (“L’Avventura,” “Blowup”), Ingmar Bergman (“The Seventh Seal”), and Akira Kurosawa (“Rashomon”) in the middle third of the 20th century.But without Janus Films, a distribution company based at the Brattle Theater, these artistes and their masterpieces might not have reached a broader American audience—it’s all relative, after all.At the very least...
...SEVEN SAMURAI, Akira Kurosawa...
...AKIRA KUROSAWA: FOUR SAMURAI CLASSICS...
...Russian play imported to Japan, with its dark humor and dour humanity intact--indeed, italicized? That's what Akira Kurosawa managed in 1957 with his faithful film of Maxim Gorky's claustrophobic epic. The Criterion edition offers a bonus: Jean Renoir's '36 version, with Jean Gabin in the role of the charismatic thief played in the Kurosawa film by Toshiro Mifune. It's a chance to see two movie masters stamp their genius on a superb drama...
First the western went east--to Japan, where Akira Kurosawa transformed it into The Seven Samurai (1954)--then it came home, in this 1960 version of the Kurosawa classic. For a time, it upended the genre's concentration on noble or twisted loners; this was the first all-star western romp. It's in no way a terrific film; director John Sturges was a pedestrian showman. But to watch McQueen, Coburn, Yul Brynner, Charles Bronson and Eli Wallach fight for screen time is to see a fabulous showdown of egos--like Meet the Fockers, with six-guns instead...