Screenwriter John Milius ' contribution was also worked in by writing a draft of the film inspired by Akira Kurosawa's studies in lone-gun detectives, while director Siegel tackled the material from the viewpoint of bigotry.

" Only four months later, Kurosawa's eldest brother also died, leaving Akira, at age 23, the only one of the Kurosawa brothers still living, together with his three surviving sisters.

The decade started with Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon ( 1950 ), which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and marked the entrance of Japanese cinema onto the world stage.

In the Sight & Sound directors ' poll, it was voted at number ten in 1992 and number nine in 2002, in both cases being tied with Kurosawa's own Rashomon ( 1950 ).

However, Daiei Motion Picture Company ( a producer of popular features at the time ) and the Japanese government had disagreed with the choice of Kurosawa's work on the grounds that it was " not enough of the Japanese movie industry " and felt that a work of Yasujiro Ozu would have been more illustrative of excellence in Japanese cinema.

Despite these reservations, the film was screened at the festival and won both the Italian Critics Award and the Golden Lion award — introducing western audiences, including western directors, more noticeably to both Kurosawa's films and techniques, such as shooting directly into the sun and using mirrors to reflect sunlight onto the actor's faces.

Red Beard looks at the problem of social injustice and explores two of Kurosawa's favourite topics: humanism and existentialism.

The set was intended to be historically accurate: the crew went as far as to use the right kind of aged wood that would have been used in the region at the time the film is set, at Kurosawa's request.

* " Sanshiro Sugata ": Kurosawa's Elegy for the Reluctant Kamikaze at Bright Lights Film Journal.

For example, the stolen sword that is at the center of the plot was a personal possession of Toshirō Mifune, the star of many of Akira Kurosawa's samurai films.

Originally intended to be a two-part film with a running time of 265 minutes, the film was severely cut at the request of the studio, against Kurosawa's wishes, after a single poorly-received screening of the full-length version.

In Akira Kurosawa's 1952 film Ikiru, protagonist Watanabe's daughter-in-law is heard humming the tune in a point-of-view scene in which the character is approaching the family home late at night.

" Yamamoto nurtured Kurosawa's talent, promoting him directly from third assistant director to chief assistant director after a year.

Leone's film elicited a legal challenge from the Japanese director, though Kurosawa's film was in turn probably based on the Dashiell Hammett novel Red Harvest ( 1929 ).

Doppelgängers are also a common theme in cinema, most notably in Henry Selick's Coraline, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Doppelganger from 2003, Avi Nesher's 1993 film of the same name starring Drew Barrymore, and The Abandoned, as well as in many TV shows.

Usagi Yojimbo is heavily influenced by Japanese cinema and has included references to the work of Akira Kurosawa ( the title of the series is derived from Kurosawa's 1960 film Yojimbo ) and to icons of popular Japanese cinema such as Lone Wolf and Cub, Zatoichi, and Godzilla.

Akira Kurosawa's film Rashomon ( 1950 ), takes only its name and some of the material for the frame scenes, such as the theft of a kimono and the discussion of the moral ambiguity of thieving to survive, from this story.

Modern writers too have adapted tales from the Konjaku Monogatarishū: a famous example is Akutagawa Ryūnosuke's In a Grove ( well known in the West from Kurosawa's film Rashomon ).

In fact, Kurosawa's cinematic collaboration with Shimura, from 1943 to 1980, started earlier and lasted longer than his work with Mifune ( 1948 – 65 ).

During Akira Kurosawa's 5 year hiatus from filmmaking, he watched a lot of television and was particularly taken by the final episode of Shin Zatouichi-Episode: Journey of Dreams ( 新座頭市 「 夢の旅 ) ( 1978 ).

It won ’ t be the last ," the film was effectively an unofficial and unlicensed remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1961 film Yojimbo ( written by Kurosawa and Ryuzo Kikushima ), lifting themes and character types from that samurai film.

British critic Sir Christopher Frayling identifies three principal sources for A Fistful of Dollars: " Partly derived from Kurosawa's samurai film Yojimbo, partly from Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest ( 1929 ), but most of all from Carlo Goldoni's eighteenth-century play Servant of Two Masters.

The 1952 re-release ( from which the 2009 Criterion DVD is made ) opens with ( translated from the original Japanese text ): " This film has been modified from the original version of Akira Kurosawa's debut film, which opened in 1943, without consulting the director or the production staff.

The film drew heavily from the conventions of Western films, especially Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Westerns, such as Once Upon a Time in the West, and John Sturges ' film The Magnificent Seven, itself being a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film, Seven Samurai.

A Fistful of Dollars was directly adapted from Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo.

* Lady Kaede, the villain from Akira Kurosawa's Ran ( 1985 movie ).

Very few of the actors from Kurosawa's stock company of the 1950s and 1960s were in it, and most of the cast were relatively unknown.

He found Kurosawa's classic Throne of Blood ( derived from Macbeth ) ludicrous, particularly its ending ; and called Gojira ( Godzilla ) " an incredibly awful film ".

Reminiscent of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, it explores the human complexities and moral murkiness of war through multiple perspectives and flashbacks surrounding the unintended murder of an alleged Serb smuggler by three Croatian soldiers returning from the front in Karlovac.

In the last of Kurosawa's films as an assistant director, Horse ( Uma, 1941 ), Kurosawa took over most of the production, as Yamamoto was occupied with the shooting of another film.

In 1984, Marker was invited by producer Serge Silberman to document the making of Akira Kurosawa's film Ran.

The film focuses more on Kurosawa's remote but polite personality than on the making of the film.

The latter type of works include Akira Kurosawa's film Kagemusha, which portrays Nobunaga as energetic, athletic and respectful towards his enemies.

" Pauline Kael, he notes, was willing to acknowledge this critical ennui and thus appreciate how a film such as Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo ( 1961 ) " could exploit Western conventions while debunking its morality.

* In Akira Kurosawa's film Dodesukaden a mentally ill boy pretends to be a tram conductor.

It is a western-style remake based on Akira Kurosawa's 1954 Japanese film Seven Samurai.

The Magnificent Seven a 1960 American western film directed by John Sturges was a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film, Seven Samurai.

* January 15 – Release, in Japan, of the film Throne of Blood, Akira Kurosawa's reworking of Macbeth.

His film A Fistful of Dollars ( Per un Pugno di Dollari, 1964 ) was based upon Akira Kurosawa's Edo-era samurai adventure Yojimbo ( 1961 ).

In contrast to the cold drab greys of Brook and Kozintsev, Kurosawa's film is full of vibrant colour: external scenes in yellows, blues and greens, interiors in browns and ambers, and Emi Wada's Oscar-winning colour-coded costumes for each family member's soldiers.

George Lucas's creation of R2-D2 was influenced by Akira Kurosawa's 1958 feature film The Hidden Fortress ( USA release 1962 ), particularly Tahei and Matakishi, the two comic relief characters that serve as sidekicks to General Makabe.

Mifune may also be credited with originating the Yakuza archetype, with his performance as a mobster in Kurosawa's Drunken Angel ( 1948 ), the first Yakuza film.

Kurosawa's admiration for silent film and modern art can be seen in the film's minimalist sets.

Robert Altman compliments Kurosawa's use of " dappled " light throughout the film, which gives the characters and settings further ambiguity.

Later film and TV uses of the " Rashomon effect " focus on revealing " the truth " in a now conventional technique that presents the final version of a story as the truth, an approach that only matches Kurosawa's film on the surface.

However, Akutagawa's " In a Grove " predates Kurosawa's film adaptation by 28 years, thus any international postwar allegory would have been the result of Kurosawa's editing ( based more on the framing of the tale than the events themselves ).