Akira Kurosawa's famous film Rashomon was originally released in Japan in the fall of 1950. It was not until about a year later that it was started to be screened in different countries around the world. the world at film festivals and its production debuted at the box office in the United States in the winter of 1951. Rashomon received recognition from many critics at the time and eventually won awards from the BAFTA, Blue Ribbon and even received an Oscar nomination. The story of the film was not originally written as a film, in fact, the main story of Rashomon was adapted from the Japanese short story titled "In a Grove" which was written and published by the author Ryūnosuke Akutugawa about 30 years ago, in 1922. Say no. to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned"?Get the original essayRashomon was released during what is considered by most to be the golden age of Japanese cinema and is often cited as the one of the best films to come. at that time. The golden age of Japanese cinema is generally considered to have taken place between 1945 and 1965 (Ragone 14), but most films from the golden age date from the 1950s. The decade of the 1950s gave birth of many of Japan's best-known and critically acclaimed films, such as Toho's classic monster films like Godzilla and Rodan, as well as Hiroshi Inigaki's Samurai film series. Rashomon was a groundbreaking film when it came out and it's still talked about. today, and his style is used in cinema around the world. Rashomon created the Rashomon Effect: When an event occurs with conflicting interpretations by multiple people, this effect can be seen on television and in movies. Rashomon uses a mixture of many types of genres like crime, drama, mystery, Jidaigeki and what resembles Noir with its use of lighting and shadows. They also break some of these genre conventions throughout the film. The film itself also has connections to post-war Japan, with the events, locations and characters reflecting Japan's military defeat and American occupation. Rashomon uses many types of genre conventions throughout the film, most notably its use of drama. Rashomon, by being told in a "traditional" style, attempts to both break and rethink its own conventions, using the audience's understanding of Jidaigeki to make, and after this break, its previously established inclinations about how the characters should act and how they should act. should be filmed. Rashomon could be a period drama by following the conventions of a standard drama and then breaking away from the flow of the film, such as its characters, setting, and major scenes. Kurisawa expertly uses camerawork and theme to make this film unique in its storytelling capabilities. For the first half of the film, Rashomon plays like a regular Jidaigeki, with each character telling their own story in court to prove they are innocent, which shows how true each character is to their character archetype. Kurisawa even described the storyline as showing how human beings are incapable of being honest with themselves. Another example of characters not following their archetype is the fight scene. In Jidaigeki, fight scenes are usually bloodless deaths with exaggerated movements. But in Rashomon, there are many fight scenes and each of them is different, but the fist fight starts like any ordinary "heroic or honorable" fight. Then it becomes slower anddegrades into a pathetic and laughable duel where the samurai and Tajomaru run around, fall, trip over themselves and are barely able to face each other's swords. But in the end, the samurai dies anyway. Jidaigeki also has a clear morality of right and wrong with the characters, but Kurosawa blurs the line of right and wrong, making the audience guess who is truly good or evil. The hero of Jidaigeki is usually a clean, perfect, moral man, while the villains are the opposite of that. At first the samurai is portrayed as the hero, but then he is broken during the story of the woodcutter when we see how cruel and abusive he is to his wife. Then there's Tajomaru who we think is a dirty bandit, but is later seen to be noble and honorable in each story. Then there is the samurai's wife, she starts out looking and acting like a goddess. But his hair and clothes become more and more disordered and dirty, as do his personality and morals. There's also the camerawork and technique that Jidaigeki uses, which Kurisawa breaks throughout the film. Looking at the sun has many symbolic purposes, it breaks the convections of Jidaigeki and was one of the taboos of cinema as Kurisawa said. Rashomon makes full use of his camerawork and narration to tell the story. "The main obvious feature of Rashomon's time series is the shift to a slower cutting pace after the bandit's testimony ends." This shows who changes pace with each testimony, and even shows how the editing slows down over the course of the film. Then there's the acting and camera work. "But when the actors in Rashomon look directly into the camera and tell contradictory narratives – and worse still when the camera's seemingly objective view records different events – it imposes on the viewer, narratively and thematically, a self-conscious awareness of their own interpretative activity. Little things like this add to the mystery of the death, as the audience is unable to understand the truth Rashomon fits easily into the golden age of Japanese cinema, just as it does into post-Japanese cinema. war Akira Kurosawa is one of the best-known filmmakers of post-war Japanese cinema The effects of World War II, specifically the horrific bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. great effect on the Japanese artistic community, and these influences are still visible today in Japanese cinema and media Akira Kurosawa noted that one of his greatest inspirations during the production of Rashomon were the films of the. era of silent cinema In Richie's interview, Kurosawa said: "I like silent pictures and always have. They are often much more beautiful than sound pictures. 'be. In any case, I wanted to restore a little of this beauty. I thought of it, I remember, this way: one of the techniques of modern painting is simplification, so I have to simplify this film. Rashomon is one of the most important films in Japanese cinema history, its experimental cinematography and timeless story still studied to this day. Cinematically, framing is one of the key features of Kurosawa's films and is used in Rashomon in order to establish the primitiveness of its characters. Kurosawa is a painter with his shots, he tries to control every aspect of the shot as if it were a painting, resulting in powerful and well-developed images. This is used effectively in many of Kurosawa's films and Rashomon is no different. One of the central themes of the film is that itThere is a fine line between humanity and animals. Tajomaru is used throughout the film to present this fine line as a man who embarks on madness and moves with the tact of an animal. During his first testimony, a scene shows Tajomaru tracking the two victims through the forest. A shot shows Tajomaru looking at them through the cover of the woods. It is perfectly framed by the leaves and branches, while its placement above gives it the look of a hunter following its prey. This is a powerful scene from Kurosawa and one of the early founders of the primitive side of civilized man. Although Kurosawa is the creator of the narrative, his camerawork is integral to the telling of his stories. His use of photographic scenes is a powerful source of storytelling as well as a key factor in all of Kurosawa's films. The story told in Rashomon is another key part of everything Kurosawa stands for. Rashomon is a look at the human spirit and the terrible things civilized people can do. Kurosawa has long been curious about these types of actions after living through a tumultuous period in Japanese history. As writer and director, Kurosawa had complete control to create and film exactly the film he wanted. Rashomon brings audiences a story centered around this idea of ​​human deception and the objectivity of truth. Kurosawa uses his films and techniques to bring these ideas to life in a way that is unique to most authors. In all of Kurosawa's films, including Rashomon, the use of movement in his shots is powerful. He uses the movement of nature to create shots with lots of movement and thus attracting the audience's full attention. In Rashomon, the movement of the powerful rain around the men recalling the stories helps establish the emotion enveloped in this gathering. They suffer from a loss of faith in humanity, just as Kurosawa himself struggled, and the weather and movements around them reflect this. These aspects all highlight Kurosawa's inner struggle with human nature. But the most telling part of the story is the ending. In a story filled with conflicting accounts of a single incident, Rashomon leaves the audience without revealing what the real story was. Just like Kurosawa will never understand the depths of humanity. Rashomon is a great example of everything that makes Akira Kurosawa a great director. His unique filming techniques help bring scenes to life with movement, and the story he wrote captures the raw emotion of the boundary between man and animal. Overall, this film will not have the success it did with Kurosawa and cannot be separated from his touches. When a film is perceived differently from what it is intended to be, the viewer often misses many story elements and major plot points. It's never a good thing when a film's meaning, story, plot, or ideas don't stick with its viewers, but in many cases, especially when the film is mostly foreign (if not completely foreign), this is due to poor communication about how the location of a film's creation or the location of the characters affects how the film is viewed. Some of these films are made without the intention of feeding the audience the background of film culture. This is a fairly common way of looking at films, known as the national cinema approach. In Kurosawas Rashomon, we are meant to know a handful of things about Japanese culture in order to fully grasp the monumental weight of some of the actions that occur. Rashomon is a poignant story that speaks directly to the nature of humanity.By exploring one of the most atrocious acts a human being can commit and setting the film in the ravaged village of Rashomon, plagued by war, natural disasters and almost every suffering imaginable, we are able to discover the true nature of humanity. . When humans are placed in a situation of extreme distress, will their morality hold up? Kurosawa uses this backdrop to create a skeptical view of humanity that has few redeeming moments except for the film's final scene. The film attacks the idea of ​​human holiness by addressing the concept of truth, a value that humans hold in high esteem. The story of Rashomon would have us believe that humans only tell the truth when it serves them best and will lie if the truth reveals something compromising to their character that they would not want others or themselves to believe- same. Kurosawa conveys this skeptical view of morality by setting the film in a period where crude human behavior has become the norm, revolving the plot around the immoral actions of his characters, and exploring the truthfulness of these characters. As previously noted, the film takes place in the titular village of Rashomon. In the years before the story, the village experienced a period of great misfortune, suffering countless natural disasters, war, famine and disease. The village itself is in ruins and there are few people. These circumstances have changed the inhabitants of the village, they have hardened themselves to the reality they must face. The film also depicts our willingness to abandon our old notion of morality through the actions of its characters. The most obvious example is that of the bandit Tajomaru. He is known throughout the country for the actions he has performed and is a character with no morals and little respect for his actions. Tajomaru seems to take pleasure in harming others. In the story, he murders a man (according to his story and the loggers) and rapes a woman. In his telling of the story, he seems almost proud of his actions, gloating about how he was able to capture and kill the man and get away with the woman, he also lied to the court. Tajomaru seems to be the embodiment of immorality and the time period they live in (Boyd). Much of Japanese history is the history of samurai culture. One thing specifically that the culture had emphasized was the honorable way of living life, even to the point of inevitable death. There is a practice in samurai culture called Seppuku, in which a samurai willingly dies with honor rather than fall into the hands of an enemy. It was common for a warrior to prefer to perform Seppuku, which was very honorable in those days, rather than being finished off by the person they were fighting. Rashomon is set in 11th century Japan, which Kurosawa uses to highlight certain extremities of human behavior. One of the ends that audiences can witness is in a story where the samurai falls to the bandit, and instead of experiencing a dishonorable death, the samurai decides to stand up and play Seppuku in the background. This scene is one of the scenes that might be confusing if the audience does not know the history and background of samurai culture before watching this film. Rashomon was made under the studio known as Daiei. At first, the studio was very reluctant to finance the project because it seemed "too unconventional" and they "worried it would be too difficult for audiences to understand." When Rashomon was entered into an international film festival called the Venice Film Festive of 1951, it received a very positive reaction. Surprisingly, Daiei, the studio, did not.