In Akira Kurosawa’s first film after the end of World War II, future beloved Ozu regular Setsuko Hara gives an astonishing performance as Yukie, the only female protagonist in Kurosawa’s body of work and one of his strongest heroes. Transforming herself from genteel bourgeois daughter to independent social activist, Yukie traverses a tumultuous decade in Japanese history. —The Criterion Collection
The son of an army officer, Kurosawa studied art before gravitating to film as a means of supporting himself. He served seven years as an assistant to director Kajiro Yamamoto before he began his own directorial career with Sanshiro Sugata (1943), a film about the 19th century struggle for supremacy between adherents of judo and jujitsu that so impressed the military government, he was prevailed upon to make a sequel (Sanshiro Sugata Part Two). Following the end of World War II, Kurosawa’s career gathered speed with a series of films that cut across all genres, from crime thrillers to period dramas. Among the latter, his Rashomon (1951) became the first postwar Japanese film to find wide favor with Western audiences. It was Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (1954), however, that made the largest impact of any of his movies outside of Japan. Although heavily cut for its original release, this three-hour-plus medieval action drama, shot with painstaking… read more
"This years flowers have been scattered, but when the time comes, they will bloom again. No matter... what hardships may befall a man, the important thing is that he try to learn from them." Feels very american, á la John Ford or GONE WITH THE WIND. A delicate flower blooms in a brash world. Education is the way to a brighter future. Like so many of his films, historical reading is required to fully enjoy. Political.
It may not be part of Kurosawa's more influential body of work, but it's a great film nonetheless, one of my favorites of his early period.
Gritty performances from Ozu regulars Setsuko Hara and Haruko Sugimura in Kurosawa's first post-war movie. One of the few Kurosawa movies to feature a strong leading female role. Hara, as she proved so often in Ozu's work, was more than up to the task of carrying the film on her shoulders...
As the 1946 date indicates, this moving drama from Akira Kurosawa was truly a hot-off-the-presses sort of enterprise; the country had barely been liberated from militarist oppression than the young… read review
Following the war Akira Kurosawa would begin to establish a rhythmic form to his films more personal in content and structure than his pre-war films, perhaps due to lighter occupation enforced censorship… read review