The Wind from the East – 2 (Postwar Japanese Cinema) FILMS TO VIEW REQUIRED VIEWING: Akira Kurosawa – Key exemplar of postwar Japanese cinema 1. Rashômon (1950) , 88 min. also...

Rashomon (1950) by Akira Kurosawa
Q.1. Whose version of the events that happened did you find the most believable and why?
Ans. Roshomon (1950) is an important Japanese screenplay as it granted worldwide recognition to the regional cinema by winning the Golden Lion award at the Film Festival in Venice. The plot is indeed unusual and experimental for the early black and white cinema of the nineteen fifties. For the first time the technique of flash back is used in a scenario where there is a disagreement about the action that is being flashed back. The screenplay displays four testimonies that are in total disagreement with each other. It is basically about a crime, more specifically a story within a story-a variation of the same tale from multiple perspectives.
    The opening displays three characters- the woodcutter, priest and the commoner taking refuge from storm under the ruined Kyoto’s Rashomo Gate and engaging in a conversation about a murdered samurai and his raped wife and the accused local bandit. Amongst the multiple versions I personally believe the story of the woodcutter. He claims that he has witnessed both the rape and the murder. According to him the bandit ties up the samurai and rapes his wife and further proposes marriage to her. She on the other hand cries and feels ashamed and loosens her husband’s ties expecting sympathy and acceptance from him. However she...