Akira Kurosawa

I chose to look at Akira Kurosawa’s films this week because I have already seen a few of them. Besides this meaning that I have a bit of a head-start, I also really enjoyed the films I’d seen, and was happy to watch more. I’ve now seen four of his films (Throne of Blood, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, and Ran), which seemed like a lot until I looked up his biography and saw that he’s directed 30 films, and served as assistant director or screenwriter on a few more. All of the films I watched were historical stories, usually about samurai or war (also, two of them were based on Shakespeare’s plays).

Now that I’ve seen several of his movies, I’m trying to think of Kurosawa’s role as an author of his movies. For me, the word “author” implies someone with a lot of influence, or complete control, over how a piece of literature is created and presented. For film, I can see how “author” wouldn’t really apply to only a director, as the filmmaking process is such a collaborative effort: is the author of the film the director, the screenwriter, the director of photography? Maybe the sound designer or even the actors play a more important role in the outcome of the film? There are so many different elements that go into making a movie that it seems hard to credit the whole piece to one person. That said, Kurosawa served as director, screenwriter, editor, and sometimes producer on many of his films (at least, all of the films I watched). It becomes easier to imagine that he had a strong influence over the movie when he was directly responsible for so many aspects of it. I think that many directors could not be considered true authors of their films (at least, not the only one), but because of his involvement, maybe Kurosawa can be.

There are many themes that reoccur through most of his movies, such as the individual hero (as seen in Yojimbo), or the lust for power (Throne of Blood and Ran), and of course the interest in historical dramas, that unify Kurosawa’s films in a way that he must have been controlled. To be fair, I’ve only seen four of his movies, and I’ve been specifically interested in the historical ones (thanks to a few weeks of watching samurai movies obsessively as research for my thesis). So, my understanding of his work is relatively small, and my opinion might be biased. And I’m still not convinced that Kurosawa can be considered the sole author of his films (I think it’s very important to credit cinematographers who worked with him on the superbly-designed black and white films, or actors such as Toshiro Mifune who alone collaborated with Kurosawa on half of his films). But, I would believe that Kurosawa played a bigger role in his films that most directors can claim, and he can come pretty close to being considered an “author”.