DIRECTOR: Akira Kurosawa
PRODUCER: Minoura Jingo
PRODUCTION CO: Daiei
SCREENPLAY: Kurosawa Akira, Hashimoto Shinobu, based on the story 'In a Grove' by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke
​PHOTOGRAPHY: Miyagawa Kazuo
EDITOR: Kurosawa Akira
MUSIC: Hayasaka Fumio
WITH: Mifune Toshiro (Tajōmaru, the Bandit), Mori Masayuki (Kanazawa Takehiro, the Samurai), Kyō Machiko (Masako, Kanazawa's wife), Shimura Takashi (the Woodcutter), Chiaki Minoru (the Priest), Ueda Kichijirō (the Commoner)

​​FESTIVALS: Venice (Golden Lion)

REVIEWS

“The West was almost entirely ignorant of Japanese cinema before Rashōmon screened at Venice in 1951
and won the Golden Lion. Essentially a story about the subjective nature of truth, the film is set in
the 11th Century. The source lies in two short stories, ‘Rashōmon’ and ‘In the Grove’, written by
Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, who died in 1927; he has been compared to Edgar Allan Poe. In a dark forest,
a woman is raped and her husband, a samurai, is murdered by a bandit. Four versions of the story
unfold, each point of view offering a different perspective, a different ‘reality’. Through a medium,
the dead samurai claims he killed himself, unable to live with dishonour. The bandit insists the sex
was consensual and that he killed the samurai in a duel. The film is notable for its adventurous
photography, its innovative employment of light and shade, and for the skilled direction of the
actors, notably the startlingly physical performance by Toshirō Mifune as the bandit accused of the
crimes. Kurosawa had already made a dozen films prior to this extraordinary breakthrough and he
deliberately set out to recreate the look and atmosphere of silent cinema.”

– Sydney Film Festival

​“No film has explored the unattainability of objective truth as brilliantly and memorably as Rashōmon, the hugely influential 1950 classic directed by the great Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa. Set in Kyōtō circa the 12th century, the film famously contains four separate accounts of the same incident, narrated by four different characters whose wildly contradictory stories agree only on the most basic fact: a samurai has been killed. The point isn’t to ascertain what happened; Rashōmon is not a murder mystery. Rather, to accept the aforementioned unattainability of absolute truth…That makes it a still-electrifying experience to watch all these years later. It is a truly daring and innovative work that burrows in your consciousness and never leaves.”

– Luke Buckminster, Guardian 

FILM SOCIETY SCREENINGS

​Canterbury     
Monday, 24 February, 7.00pm ​

Queenstown
Tuesday, 29 April, 8.00pm

Tauranga
Wednesday, 28 May, 6.10pm

Wellington     
Monday, 09 June, 6.15pm

Wellington     
Monday, 09 June, 830pm

Whanganui   
Monday, 23 June, 7.00pm

Palmerston North
Wednesday, 16 July, 6.00pm

New Plymouth
Wednesday, 17 September, 6.00pm

Auckland
Monday, 06 October, 6.15pm
KUROSAWA >> ​ ​