|
Born
on March 23, 1910 at Omori, Tokyo (Japan), Akira is the son of an army officer Isamu and
Shima Kurosawa. The youngest of eight children, Akira displayed an early interest in art,
and so he was allowed to attend a private art school while still a teenager. He wanted to
be a professional artist, but he was unable to support himself, as his paintings did not
sell well enough.
At 26, he decided to change his career and turned to
films. He joined as assistant to director Kajiro Yamamoto with whom he spent
seven years before he went on to make his own movie “Sugata Sanshiro"
(1943).The film depicted the 19th-century struggle for supremacy between adherents of judo and ju-jitsu that
so impressed the military government, he was prevailed upon to make a sequel.
Kurosawa directed ten films during the 1940's, but it was with "Rashomon", released in 1950, that
he gained international attention when it won the 1951 Golden Lion Award from
the Venice Film Festival. "Rashomon" won the Oscar for Best Foreign
Film in 1952.A series of successful
films followed throughout the 1950's, bringing Kurosawa to the forefront of
internationally known directors.
It was Kurosawa's The
Seven Samurai (1954), however, that made the largest impact of any of
his movies. The medieval action drama, shot with painstaking attention to both
dramatic and period detail, became one of the most popular Japanese films of
all time in the West. In his native country, Japan, he was criticized for being
too "western" and his choice of writers like Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky
and Dashiel Hammet was viewed with suspicion.
A number of his samurai films
have been adapted into westerns, including Seven
Samurai and Yojimbo.
George Lucas has said that Kurosawa’s The
Hidden Fortress inspired his film, Star Wars. In the early 1980s, an
unfilmed screenplay of Kurosawa's also served as the basis for Runaway Train
(1985), a popular action thriller.
Though his film career seemed flawless, Kurosawa’s
personal life was not all that smooth. He suffered from severe depression in
1971 and attempted suicide. However, he recovered soon enough and came back
with a vengeance in 1975 with "Dersu
Urzala", a film made in the USSR."
Kagemusha",
his tale of a man who serves as a "double" for a dead feudal lord won
the Golden Palm from Cannes in 1980. In 1985, his version of "King
Lear", titled "
Ran"
was released.It received an Oscar nomination for Best Director(1986). In 1990, the Academy Awards presented
Kurosawa with an Honorary Award for cinematic accomplishments.
Besides his written works, Kurosawa's movie artwork has
been admired the world over as having true artistic power. The sculpture he
made for Anabuki Kosan (Inc.) was his first challenge in three-dimensional art.
Kurosawa, died of a cardiac stroke in September 6,
1998 in Tokyo, at the age of 88. By the end of his career Kurosawa had come to
be regarded as one of Japan's greatest directors. A sensitive romantic at
heart, with a sentimental streak that occasionally rises forcefully to the
surface of his movies Akira’s legendary movies will continue to inspire budding
directors and enthrall film buffs for generations to come.
|
