For a perfectionist like Kurosawa, this step was significant in order to attain total creative control of his works.ĩ. The commercial success of Seven Samurai and The Hidden Fortress pushed the filmmaker to form his own production company. The Bad Sleep Well marks Kurosawa’s first independent production. He tries to expose large-scale corporate corruption as well as seek revenge for the death of his father. The narrative largely revolves around a young mild-mannered business executive, played by Kurosawa regular Toshiro Mifune. This becomes apparent in the opening wedding scene, where the principal players and the inherent conflicts are brilliantly laid out.
It’s well known that Kurosawa’s skill at staging scenes is unparalleled. The film’s title and its aesthetics also remind us of film noir’s cynical world view. Unlike Kurosawa’s adaptation of other Shakespeare plays such as Throne of Blood and Ran, this film is set in post-war Tokyo. The Bad Sleep Well is a loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. So, here’s revisiting the masterworks that moulded modern cinema into what it is today.ġ0. And it can be said with absolute certainty that his movies have advanced the industry of cinema by light years. Even moviegoers who have never seen his works will be aware of his influences. Kurosawa’s films feature some of the most groundbreaking and modern conceptualizations ever put to film. At the same time his works’ deeply loaded meanings are steeped in Japanese culture. While the films he made between 19 highly influenced US pop culture, his works at home have faced the criticism for being ‘too Western.’Īkira Kurosawa is a great artist who actually used the film form to transcend the boundaries of culture and make movies for the world. Compared to the great filmmakers of classical Japanese cinema - Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi, and Mikio Naruse - there’s a tendency to question Kurosawa films’ Japanese-ness.
Akira Kurosawa is one of the first Japanese filmmakers to achieve international acclaim. And within this vast stretch of time, there is but one man who stands above all and has rightly been hailed the ‘Emperor’. The history of cinema encompasses a rather huge chunk of world history.
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