Class X Unit III Reality to Reel-Sunshine through the Rain (Screenplay)

Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa is the most well-known of all Japanese film directors. The son of an army officer, Kurosawa studied art before gravitating to film as a means of supporting himself. He served seven years as an assistant to director Kajiro Yamamoto before he began his own directorial career with Sanshiro Sugata (1943), a film about 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 (Sanshiro Sugata Part II).    Following the end of World War II, Kurosawa's career gathered speed with a series of films that cut across all genres, from crime thrillers to period dramas -- among the latter, his Rashomon (1951) became the first postwar Japanese film to find wide favour with Western audiences, and simultaneously introduced leading man Toshiro Mifune to Western viewers. It was Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai (1954), however, that made the largest impact of any of his movies outside of Japan. At the same time, American and European filmmakers began taking a serious look at Kurosawa's movies as a source of plot material for their own work -- Rashomon was remade as The Outrage, in a western setting, while Yojimbo was remade by Sergio Leone as A Fistful of Dollars (1964). The Seven Samurai (1954) fared best of all, serving as the basis for John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven (which had been the original title of Kurosawa's movie), in 1960; the remake actually did better business in Japan than the original film did. In the early 1980s, an unfilmed screenplay of Kurosawa's also served as the basis for Runaway Train (1985), a popular action thriller.      Kurosawa's movies subsequent to his period thriller Sanjuro (1962) abandoned the action format in favor of more esoteric and serious drama, including his epic length medical melodrama Red Beard (1965). In recent years, despite ill-health and the problems getting financing for his more ambitious films, Kurosawa has remained the most prominent of Japanese filmmakers. With his Westernized style, Kurosawa has always found a wider audience and more financing opportunities in Europe and America than he has in his own country. His films are frequently copied and remade by American and European filmmakers. 
In December 1971, after a period of suffering from mental fatigue and frustrated with a run of unsatisfying and sub par directing work, Kurosawa attempted suicide by slashing his wrist thirty times with a razor. Fortunately, the wounds were not fatal and he made a full recovery. Because he could not get film financing for a period of time in his career, he directed and even appeared in Japanese television commercials. At over 6' feet tall, he was extremely large by Japanese standards, having stood a head taller than any of his colleagues.
Although the Japanese press tried to paint him as a tyrant, almost all of his casts and crews agreed he was a much more cool and detached presence on sets. Many also described him as "intense".
He was voted the 6th greatest director of all time by Entertainment Weekly, making him one among only two Asians along with Satyajit Ray (who is ranked in 25th position) on a list of 50 directors and the highest ranking non-American.  He was a fan of the films of Satyajit Ray. Kurosawa worshipped legendary American director John Ford, his primary influence as a filmmaker. When the two met, Ford was uncommonly pleasant to the younger Japanese filmmaker and afterwards Kurosawa dressed in a similar fashion to Ford when on film sets.
Although he received an Honorary Award in 1990 "For cinematic accomplishments that have inspired, delighted, enriched and entertained worldwide audiences and influenced filmmakers throughout the world," he was only nominated once for a Best Director Oscar for Ran (1985). Also, his only film to have ever received the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar was for Dersu Uzala (1975), which was also his only film not done in Japanese (it was in Russian).

His Dodes'ka-den (1970), Dersu Uzala (1975) and Kagemusha (1980) were Oscar-nominated for "Best Foreign Language Film". "Dersu Uzala" won. Rashomon (1950) won an Honorary Award as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1951.
 He was infamous for his perfectionism. Among the related tales are his insisting a stream be made to run in the opposite direction in order to get a better visual effect, and having the roof of  a house removed, later to be replaced, because he felt the roof’s presence to be unattractive in a short sequence filmed from a train. He also required that all the actors in his period films had to wear their costumes for several weeks, daily, before filming so that they would look lived in.
His family, when traced back a few generations, were samurais from the Akira Prefecture. Kurosawa said later that his father, who was tall, with a commanding presence and worked as a fitness instructor, had a bearing he thought was samurai-like. Unlike his father, Kurosawa himself was never athletically inclined.