from Daiei Studios [Japan]
Directed by
Akira
Kurosawa
Starring
Toshirô
Mifune ...Tajomaru
Machiko Kyô ...Masago
Masayuki Mori ...Takehiro
Takashi Shimura ...Woodcutter
Minoru Chiaki ...Priest
Kichijiro Ueda ...Commoner
Fumiko Honma ...Medium
Daisuke Katô ...Policeman
Written by
Ryunosuke Akutagawa (stories Rashomon and In a Grove)
Shinobu Hashimoto
Akira Kurosawa |
 In 12th-century Japan, a wealthy merchant
and his wife are ambushed by a famous bandit. The bandit rapes the wife
and kills the husband... or does he? Akira Kurosawa's classic film recounts
the crime from four separate points-of-view -- that of the bandit, the wife,
the dead man, and a lowly peasant -- with each character offering a vastly
differing version of the same story. Academy Awards: Best (Black-and-White)
Art Direction--Set Decoration. Winner of the Grand Prize at the Venice Film
Festival and an Honorary Academy Award -- it was voted by the Board of Governors
as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States
during 1951 (statuette). "Rashomon" also received two National
Board of Review Awards in 1951: Best Director and Five Best Foreign Films
of the Year. Voted One of the Top Ten Films of All Time in the 1992 SIGHT
AND SOUND International Film Directors' Poll. "Rashomon" is the
film that established Kurosawa on the international art house circuit. It
was remade as "The Outrage," a 1964 American western directed
by Martin Ritt and starring Paul Newman.
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