Press Record.

Cinematheque Ontario presents Akira Kurosawa's RASHOMON
(Japan, 1950) Presented by: Cinematheque Ontario
Thursday July 5th @ 8PM
AGO-Jackman Hall-317 Dundas St W
Box Office at Manulife-55 BloorW
or call 416-968-FILM.


Cinematheque Ontario presents Akira Kurosawa's RASHOMON (Japan, 1950)
RASHOMON
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Japan minutes
Cast: Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo

“***** One of the most brilliantly constructed films of all time, RASHOMON is a monument to Akira Kurosawa’s greatness. . . . A hallmark of film history” (James Monaco).

RASHOMON was the film that introduced Japanese cinema to the western world (which, properly amazed, immediately lavished prizes on it, including the Grand Prize at the Venice film festival and the Academy Award® for Best Foreign Language Film). It landed actress Machiko Kyo on the cover of Life Magazine, made Toshiro Mifune an international superstar, and influenced generations of filmmakers, from Resnais (LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD) to Tarantino (RESERVOIR DOGS). Indeed, its impact on popular culture was so immense that “Rashomon” has become a code word for the multiplicity/relativity/unattainability of truth. Set in twelfth-century Kyoto, RASHOMON famously examines a tale of rape and murder from four different perspectives and asks, “which is the true story?” Opening in the rain-pelted ruins of a temple (which gives the film its name), it flashes back through a series of complex and conflicting accounts of the same event. A bandit (Mifune) comes upon an aristocratic woman (Kyo) and her samurai husband (Masayuki Mori) in the forest. He rapes her and murders him, but the versions of how and whether this happened as told by the three participants (including the dead husband’s spirit!) and a supposed witness to the crime, contradict each other in significant ways. Each has a reason to tell the tale the way he or she does, but none ultimately can be trusted for the truth. More torrential than the rain that frames the story, Mifune’s performance lays waste to good taste with its wild excesses. Stripped and capering, all eyebrows, armpits, and glinting teeth, he is less bandit than beast of the jungle. Not to be outdone, Machiko Kyo combines simpering servility and fierce vengefulness. And Kurosawa’s style, with its flashy editing, peculiar music (Ravel’s Bolero), and high-contrast cinematography – the great cinematographer Miyagawa turns the sun-dappled forest into an arena of cruelty and metaphor for memory – transforms RASHOMON into a startling tour de force.

Kurosawa's "THE SEVEN SAMURAI" follows July 9, 6:30 PM