What Akira Kurosawa Watched (Or: 100 Ways to Expand Your Cinematic Mind)

And if not expand it, at least make your life a hell of a lot more interesting...

"To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes."
- Akira Kurosawa

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5AM StoryTalk’s storytelling resource this week concerns filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. There are few directors as monumentally important to world cinema as he is. The more than thirty films he directed have influenced generations of the world’s greatest filmmakers.

As Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather) once said of Kurosawa: “One thing that distinguishes Akira Kurosawa is that he didn’t just make a masterpiece or two masterpieces. He made eight masterpieces.”

These films have been endlessly officially and loosely (and sometimes even illegally) remade, especially Rashomon, Yojimbo, and Seven Samurai. For example: Clint Eastwood wouldn’t be the icon he is today if Sergio Leone hadn’t outright stolen Yojimbo and turned it into A Fistful of Dollars for the actor; George Lucas famously borrowed significant elements of The Hidden Fortress for Star Wars; and most recently, Zack Snyder lifted much of the plot of Seven Samurai for his film duology Rebel Moon.

Because of Kurosawa’s influence on the art of cinema and wider storytelling in general throughout the 20th century, it’s worth considering what kind of films he was most moved and inspired by himself. Below you will find his “100 favorite films”, though that’s a bit misleading - hence the quotation marks. The list was assembled after his death by his daughter, Kazuko Kurosawa, from his notes and shaped by their many personal conversations about cinema.

“My father always said that the films he loved were too many to count, and to make a top ten rank [was impossible],” she said. “That explains why you cannot find in this list many of the titles of the films he regarded as wonderful.”

Kazuko Kurosawa limited the following list to one film per filmmaker. Combing through it, I’ve only seen forty of the titles, but I can assure you it is comprised of numerous exceedingly beautiful films that exemplify the power of cinema to reveal profound human truths.

I’ll offer these observations about the list, as well…

First and foremost, there are no women on it. The exclusion of Agnès Varda, Chantal Akerman, and Margarethe von Trotta all startle. Equally startling is the absence of Orson Welles and, specifically, Citizen Kane. But I’d say just as much about others such as Preston Sturges, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder; the omission of Elem Klimov’s Come and See (1985) might stand out more than any other because I was sure I would see it on here. Kurosawa died in 1998, so much of the American Independent Film Movement of the Nineties is also overlooked, including Pulp Fiction (1994). Central and South America and Africa have no presence and India, one of the world’s greatest film cultures for a century now, is also barely represented. As for the titles that were selected from acclaimed filmmakers, some of them are also very unusual given other, more significant films in their oeuvres, such as Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy (1983) rather than, say, Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980), or Goodfellas (1988). Musicals, science-fiction/fantasy, and horror are almost wholly absent…which, to be fair, doesn’t surprise me at all, knowing Kurosawa’s instincts.

So, what do you make of this list? My advice to you is to consider the titles here that you haven’t heard of, the ones that feel completely alien to you or your experience, and dive in. Akira Kurosawa is a storytelling master, one of the greatest filmmakers ever to live, offering you a tour through cinema. Don’t pass it up.

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Please note I’ve done my best to properly present the titles and names, given their internationally diverse origins. But I expect diacritics have been missed.

1. BROKEN BLOSSOMS OR THE YELLOW MAN AND THE GIRL (1919) – D.W. Griffith

2. DAS CABINET DES DR. CALIGARI / THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1920) – Robert Wiene

3. DR. MABUSE, DER SPIELER – EIN BILD DER ZEIT (PART 1 – PART 2) / DR. MABUSE, THE GAMBLER (1922) – Fritz Lang

4. THE GOLD RUSH (1925) – Charlie Chaplin

5. LA CHUTE DE LA MAISON USHER / THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1928) – Jean Epstein

6. UN CHIEN ANDALOU / AN ANDALUSIAN DOG (1928) – Luis Buñuel

7. MOROCCO (1930) – Josef von Sternberg

8. DER KONGREß TANZT (1931) – Erik Charell

9. DIE 3 GROSCHEN-OPER / THE THREEPENNY OPERA (1931) – G.W. Pabst

10. LEISE FLEHEN MEINE LIEDER / LOVER DIVINE (1933) – Will Forst

11. THE THIN MAN (1934) – W.S. Van Dyke

12. TONARI NO YAE-CHAN / MY LITTLE NEIGHBOUR, YAE (1934) – Yasujiro Shimazu

13. TANGE SAZEN YOWA: HYAKUMAN RYO NO TSUBO / SAZEN TANGE AND THE POT WORTH A MILLION RYO (1935) – Sadao Yamanaka

14. AKANISHI KAKITA / CAPRICIOUS YOUNG MEN (1936) – Mansaku Itami

15. LA GRANDE ILLUSION / THE GRAND ILLUSION (1937) – Jean Renoir

16. STELLA DALLAS (1937) – King Vidor

17. TSUZURIKATA KYOSHITSU / LESSONS IN ESSAY (1938) – Kajiro Yamamoto

18. TSUCHI / EARTH (1939) – Tomu Uchida

19. NINOTCHKA – (1939) Ernst Lubitsch

20. IVAN GROZNYY I, IVAN GROZNYY II: BOYARSKY ZAGOVOR / IVAN THE TERRIBLE PARTS I AND II (1944-46) – Sergei Eisenstein

21. MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (1946) – John Ford

22. IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE – (1946) Frank Capra

23. THE BIG SLEEP (1946) – Howard Hawks

24. LADRI DI BICICLETTE / THE BICYCLE THIEF (1948) – Vittorio De Sica

25. AOI SANMYAKU / THE GREEN MOUNTAINS (1949) – Tadashi Imai

26. THE THIRD MAN – Carol Reed (1949)

27. BANSHUN /LATE SPRING (1949) – Yasujiro Ozu

28. ORPHEUS (1949) – Jean Cocteau

29. KARUMEN KOKYO NI KAERU / CARMEN COMES HOME – Keisuke Kinoshita, 1951.

30. A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE (1951) – Elia Kazan

31. THÉRÈSE RAQUIN / THE ADULTRESS (1953) – Marcel Carné

32. SAIKAKU ICHIDAI ONNA / THE LIFE OF OHARU (1952) – Kenji Mizoguchi

33. VIAGGIO IN ITALIA / JOURNEY TO ITALY (1953) – Roberto Rossellini

34. GOJIRA /GODZILLA (1954) – Ishirō Honda

35. LA STRADA – Federico Fellini (1954)

36. UKIGUMO / FLOATING CLOUDS (1955) – Mikio Naruse

37. PATHER PANCHALI / SONG OF THE ROAD (1955) – Satyajit Ray

38. DADDY LONG LEGS (1955) – Jean Negulesco

39. THE PROUD ONES (1956) – Robert D. Webb

40. BAKUMATSU TAIYODEN / SUN IN THE LAST DAYS OF THE SHOGUNATE (1957) – Yūzō Kawashima

41. THE YOUNG LIONS (1957) – Edward Dmytryk

42. LES COUSINS / THE COUSINS (1959) – Claude Chabrol

43. LES QUARTE CENTS COUPS / THE 400 BLOWS (1959) – François Truffaut

44. A BOUT DE SOUFFLE / BREATHLESS (1960) – Jean-Luc Godard

45. BEN-HUR (1959) – William Wyler

46. OTOTO / HER BROTHER (1960) – Kon Ichikawa

47. UNE AUSSI LONGUE ABSENCE / THE LONG ABSENCE (1960) – Henri Colpi

48. LE VOYAGE EN BALLON / STOWAWAY IN THE SKY (1960) – Albert Lamorisse

49. PLEIN SOLEIL / PURPLE NOON (1960) – René Clément

50. ZAZIE DANS LE MÉTRO / ZAZIE ON THE SUBWAY (1960) – Louis Malle

51. L’ANNÉE DERNIÈRE À MARIENBAD / LAST YEAR IN MARIENBAD (1960) – Alain Resnais

52. WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962) – Robert Aldrich

53. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962) – David Lean

54. MÉLODIE EN SOUS-SOL / ANY NUMBER CAN WIN (1963) – Henri Verneuil

55. THE BIRDS (1963) – Alfred Hitchcock

56. IL DESERTO ROSSO / THE RED DESERT (1964) - Michelangelo Antonioni

57. WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966) – Mike Nichols

58. BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967) – Arthur Penn

59. IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1967) – Norman Jewison

60. THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE (1968) – Tony Richardson

61. MIDNIGHT COWBOY (1969) – John Schlesinger

62. M*A*S*H (1970) – Robert Altman

63. JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN (1971) – Dalton Trumbo

64. THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1971) – William Friedkin

65. EL ESPÍRITU DE LA COLMENA / SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE (1973) – Victor Erice

66. SOLYARIS / SOLARIS (1972) – Andrei Tarkovsky

67. THE DAY OF THE JACKAL (1974) – Fred Zinneman

68. GRUPPO DI FAMIGLIA IN UN INTERNO / CONVERSATION PIECE (1974) – Luchino Visconti

69. THE GODFATHER PART II (1974) – Francis Ford Coppola

70. SANDAKAN HACHIBAN SHŌKAN: BŌKYŌ / SANDAKAN NO. 8 (1974) – Kei Kumai

71. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (1976) – Milos Forman

72. O, THIASSOS / THE TROUPE (1975) – Theodoro Angelopoulos

73. BARRY LYNDON (1975) – Stanley Kubrick

74. DAICHI NO KOMORIUTA / LULLABY OF THE EARTH (1976) – Yasuzo Masumura

75. ANNIE HALL (1977) – Woody Allen

76. NEOKONCHENNAYA PYESA DLYA MEKHANICHESKOGO PIANINO / UNFINISHED PIECE FOR MECHANICAL PIANO (1977) – Nikita Mikhalkov

77. PADRE PADRONE / MY FATHER MY Master (1977) (Paolo and Vittorio Taviani

78. GLORIA (1980) – John Cassavetes

79. HARUKANARU YAMA NO YOBIGOE /A DISTANT CRY FROM SPRING (1980) – Yoji Yamada

80. LA TRAVIATA (1982) – Franco Zeffirelli

81. FANNY OCH ALEXANDER / FANNY AND ALEXANDER (1982) – Ingmar Bergman

82. FITZCARRALDO (1982) – Werner Herzog

83. THE KING OF COMEDY (1983) – Martin Scorsese

84. MERRY CHRISTMAS MR. LAWRENCE – Nagisa Ōshima, 1983.

85. THE KILLING FIELDS (1984) – Roland Joffé

86. STRANGER THAN PARADISE (1984) – Jim Jarmusch

87. DŌNGDŌNG DE JIÀQĪ / A SUMMER AT GRANDPA’S (1984) – Hou Hsiao-hsien

88. PARIS, TEXAS (1984) – Wim Wenders

89. WITNESS (1985) – Peter Weir

90. THE TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL (1985) – Peter Masterson

91. OTAC NA SLUŽBENOM PUTU / WHEN FATHER WAS AWAY ON BUSINESS (1985) – Emir Kusturica

92. THE DEAD (1987) – John Huston

93. KHANE-YE DOUST KODJAST? / WHERE IS THE FRIEND’S HOME? (1987) – Abbas Kiarostami

94. BAGDAD CAFE (1987) – Percy Adlon

95. THE WHALES OF AUGUST (1987) – Lindsay Anderson

96. RUNNING ON EMPTY (1988) – Sidney Lumet

97. TONARI NO TOTORO / MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO (1988) – Hayao Miyazaki

98. A UN / BUDDIES (1989) – Yasuo Furuhata

99. LA BELLE NOISEUSE / THE BEAUTIFUL TROUBLEMAKER (1991) – Jacques Rivette

100. HANA-BI / FIREWORKS (1997) – Takeshi Kitano

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