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

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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!

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.