Rashomon: Akira Kurosawa, director (Rutgers Films in Print series) [Hardcover]

Donald Richie (Author)

Book Description

Series: Rutgers Films in Print series | Publication Date: March 1, 1987

Rashomon is one of the greatest of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's films, the winner of the 1951 Venice Festival prize and the Academy Award for best foreign film in 1952. It features Toshiru Mifune, the best-known Japanese actor in the West, as the bandit, and accused rapist and murderer. At the beginning of the film, a woodcutter, priest, and commoner happen to meet at the ruined gate--Rashomon--outside the city of Kyoto. This tale of rape and murder is first seen through the eyes of the woodcutter and priest, both of whom have been touched by the events. The cynical, detached commoner, "everyman," listens to and comments upon their stories. The central section of the film, a series of flashbacks and tales within tales, consists of the same events retold by the husband (speaking through a medium, from the grave), the wife, the bandit, and the woodcutter. Each tells what happened--or possibly, what should have happened. The film deals with multiple truths; Richie summarized the director's point of view in the introduction: "the world is illusion, you yourself make reality, but this reality undoes you if you submit to being limited by what you have made." The sixth title in the Rutgers Films in Print Series and the first Japanese film, this volume brings together for the first time the full continuity script of Rashomon; an introductory essay by Donald Richie; the Akutagawa stories upon which the film is based; critical review and commentaries of the film; a filmography; and a bibliography. Donald Richie is the author of the definitive books in English on Kurosawa and Ozu. In addition, he is coauthor of the standard English-language history of the Japanese film and author or editor of several other books on the subject. He has also served as film critic for the Japan Times and as curator of film at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Japanese (translation)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 216 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press (March 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813511798
• ISBN-13: 978-0813511795
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 6.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,315,522 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loads of Valuable Information About an Important Movie, September 24, 2004

By 

ReviewerWhoPrefersToBeAnonymous (California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Rashomon: Akira Kurosawa, director (Rutgers Films in Print) (Paperback)

Rashomon is one of the greatest films of all time, as evidenced by: (a) its placement in the top 250 movies ever (currently #57) at the Internet Movie Database; (b) its current rank of #2 among all foreign movies at a Web site of an "online community of foreign film buffs"; (c) a current grade of A- with Yahoo! Users (which is fairly rare for any movie); (d) tens of thousands of "hits" if you use any Web search engine; (e) a Tomatometer rating of 100% (i.e., all positive critics' reviews) at the Rotten Tomatoes Web site; (f) its selection in a 1996 Movieline Magazine article as one of the 100 Greatest Foreign Films; (g) its inclusion in the 2002 book "The A List: The National Society of Film Critics' 100 Essential Films"; (h) its listing in the 2004 book "The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made"; (i) its placement as #10 in the Village Voice "100 Best Films of the [20th] Century" based on a 1999 poll of critics; (j) the movie's influence on later ones such as "The Usual Suspects," "Courage Under Fire," "Wicker Park," and "Hero"; and (k) its #9 rank in the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound Directors' Top Ten Poll 2002.

This book gives a great deal of info about this 1950 motion picture masterpiece. It's similar to the book "Focus on Rashomon" published in 1972 by Prentice-Hall and also edited by Donald Richie. Both contain a 20+ page essay by Richie originally from "The Films of Akira Kurosawa," as well as the short stories by Akutagawa ("Rashomon" and "In a Grove") that form the basis of the film. Also in both books are various reviews and commentaries, including "Rashomon and the Japanese Cinema" by Curtis Harrington; "Rashomon and the Fifth Witness" by George Barbarow; "Rashomon as Modern Art" by Parker Tyler; "Memory of Defeat in Japan: a Reappraisal of Rashomon" by James Davidson; and "Rashomon" by Tadao Sato. (Some reviews and commentaries - by Farber, Gadi, Ghelli, Iwasaki, Mercier, Time Magazine, Young, and Zunser - are in the 1972 book but not this one. I didn't feel that any of these were crucial.)

Improving upon the 1972 compilation, however, this 1987 Rutgers volume contains: (1) An essay by Audie Bock, "Kurosawa: His Life and Art." (2) A 57-page continuity script. This is similar to pages 11-169 of the book "Rashomon; a film by Akira Kurosawa from the filmscript by Akira Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto" published in 1969 by Grove Press, except that there are fewer stills and the duration of each of the 407 shots is not given. (3) An excerpt from Kurosawa's 1982 "Something Like an Autobiography." (4) High-quality 1970s-1980s commentaries by Kauffman, Mellen, and McDonald. Buy this book from Amazon.com!

4 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A handsome volume, March 15, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Rashomon: Akira Kurosawa, director (Rutgers Films in Print series) (Hardcover)

This looks like an interesting and handsome volume, containing commentary by a number of persons about the film and its antecedents. To be honest, I have not read it yet.

I was hoping against hope that it would contain the screenplay for the film; it does not. It contains the usual transcript of the film printed in screenplay format instead.