Word: rashomonics
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Dates: during 1952-1952
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...Rashomon. A curious, powerful Japanese film built on four conflicting versions of an ancient crime of violence (TIME...
...strange film even by the standards of Japan (where it drew only enough business to meet its cost of $140,000), Rashomon opens in a ruined 8th century temple, where a woodcutter and a Buddhist priest, taking shelter from a lashing rain, ponder a bewildering crime that has shaken their faith in men. As they recount the crime to a cynical passerby, flashbacks picture the testimony at the trial and four differing re-enactments of the violent incident itself...
...Rashomon* (Daiei; RKO Radio), the first Japanese film to reach Manhattan in 14 years, is an interesting cinematic curiosity, quite unlike anything produced in the West. The judges at the 1951 Venice Film Festival gave it their grand prize, and other moviegoers may also be impressed by its expert photography, fluent direction and scorching insight-in terms of peculiarly Oriental flavor-into the frailty of the human animal the world over...
Brilliantly acted, Rashomon bulges with barbaric force. The bandit (Toshiro Mifune) is an unforgettable animal figure, grunting, sweating, swatting at flies that constantly light on his half-naked body, exploding in hyena-like laughter of scorn and triumph. But, more than a violent story, the film is a harsh study of universal drives stripped down to the core: lust, fear, selfishness, pride, hatred, vanity, cruelty. The woodcutter's version of the crime lays bare the meanness of man with Swiftian bitterness and contempt...
...Rashomon has other failings. Its slow pace is deliberate and consistent enough to be accepted as a matter of style, presumably designed to the Japanese taste, yet U.S. moviegoers are likely to find much of it draggy. One long sequence is spoiled by a musical score that borrows freely from Ravel's Bolero, and Director Kurosawa, though obviously gifted, sometimes becomes self-consciously infatuated with the look of his own images. For all that, Rashomon is a novel, stimulating moviegoing experience, and a sure sign that U.S. film importers will be looking hard at Japanese pictures from...