One of the most celebrated screen adaptations of Shakespeare into film, Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood reimagines Macbeth in feudal Japan. Starring Kurosawa’s longtime collaborator Toshiro Mifune and the legendary Isuzu Yamada as his ruthless wife, the film tells of a valiant warrior’s savage rise to power and his ignominious fall. With Throne of Blood, Kurosawa fuses one of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies with the formal elements of Japanese Noh theater to make a Macbeth that is all his own—a classic tale of ambition and duplicity set against a ghostly landscape of fog and inescapable doom. —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
"Listen, even the crow is saying: The throne is yours." It takes a man who knows great darkness to make a film like this. Many elements are later explored, but remain (locked in time) here: like unearthed gems. Transcends the adaptation and creates new.This may be the best example of visual storytelling (ever.) The shots are meticulously composed, the movements are meaningful and the editing is simply the best. \WOW.
A mas de 50 años de su realizacion, este clasico sigue sorprendiendo por la maestria tecnica que Kurosawa demuestra a lo largo del film. Notable por su complejidad y su perfección técnica, es una cinta qué, plano por plano, sigue deslumbrando por su onirica belleza, las notables actuaciones (estupendos Toshiro Mifune e Isuzu Yamada) y por ser la unica adaptacion cinematografica de una obra de Shakespeare que verdaderamente logra capturar en sus diálogos e imágenes toda la complejidad y el trágico espiritu de la obra original, a pesar (y en esto radica su máximo logro) de que en esta version de Macbeth, no aparece ni una sola linea del bardo Ingles. Referente obligado para cualquier amante del cine, Trono de sangre sigue demostrando por que su director ocupa un primerisimo lugar en la historia del cine mundial.
Starting today, and for most of April, Film Forum in New York will be honoring five of Japan’s greatest actresses in a portmanteau retrospective
Akira Kurosawa’s transplanting of ‘Macbeth’ into feudal Japan is unfortunately an incredibly uneven film. It’s a visual masterwork, with extraordinary imagery that’s some of the best Kurosawa – and… read review
Riding back from a decisive victory, master samurai Toshiro Mifune and Minoru Chiaki encounter a demon ghost in the middle of the Spider Castle forest, who prophesizes treason and death in the coming… read review