Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950) Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori
[The rape of a bride and the murder of her samurai husband are recalled from the perspectives of a bandit, the bride, the samurai's ghost and a woodcutter.]
Rashomon is the name of a place, the city gate of Kyoto, which no longer exists.
Does it rain a helluva lot in Japan in the summertime? One would think so from Rashomon. It teems in the opening scenes at the ruined gatehouse, but it’s all summer sunlight and sweat in the scene(s) in the forest glade.
Roger Ebert 2002:
The genius of Rashomon is that all of the flashbacks are both true and false. True, in that they present an accurate portrait of what each witness thinks happened. False, because as Kurosawa observes in his autobiography, "Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing."
Garry Gillard | New: 4 March, 2017 | Now: 8 January, 2022