YOJIMBO (1961) Kurosawa had wanted to do a film like Yojimbo for a long time. A story not of good vs. evil, but of evil vs. evil with a hero stepping in and wiping out both sides. He finally settled on a story clearly inspired by Dashiell Hammet’s Red Harvest and The Glass Key. Since …
THE BAD SLEEP WELL (1960) Kurosawa had reached a point where he had been given the opportunity to form his own production company. This development carried with it enormous responsibility, particularly financial, but Kurosawa didn’t want to make a squarely commercial film right out of the gate. He wanted to make something of social significance, …
THE HIDDEN FORTRESS (1958) Kurosawa had signed a three picture deal with Toho Studios and Throne of Blood and The Lower Depths were box office disappointments, so for his third movie Kurosawa turned to more commercial grounds, a big, sweeping samurai film. But The Hidden Fortress bears little similarity to Seven Samurai, and even less …
THE LOWER DEPTHS (1957) Maxim Gorky wrote The Lower Depths in 1902, focusing on a group of Russia’s impoverished making do in a flophouse. With a theme of hard truth vs. comforting lies, it’s little wonder that it appealed to the director of Rashomon. Not that Kurosawa needed much encouragement in his fandom towards Russian …