r/TrueFilm • u/Alcatrazepam • 6d ago

What are all of Kurosawa’s innovations?

*Akira, to be clear, not Kyoshi who I also love deeply (whom?)

For example , I understand he is credited with the invention of the “buddy cop” film with “Stray Dog.” Many people also credit him with the invention of the “action film” with Seven Samurai. Perhaps the most famous and undisputed example is the story structure used in Rashomon (and maybe the most overtly referenced in popular culture). The man was clearly a genius and is still ahead of his time so I feel there must be other examples of innovations. Do any come to mind for you? Which are your favorites?

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u/StarWarsMonopoly 6d ago edited 6d ago

I don't remember who said it, but I saw a video once that was an interview of someone talking about Kurosawa and they said that he mastered how to shoot weather on film, and if you were a film student trying to learn how to film scenes with extreme weather you should use Kurosawa as your template (I believe they used rain and snow as their two examples and then mentioned a few of his movies that had scenes in intense rain and snow).

He's probably not the first to do it, as others have mentioned with most of his 'innovations', but its certainly hard to argue that he wasn't one of the first directors to master filming intense weather on screen in crystal clear definition and with a dimension that adds a very meaningful mood to his films.

Edit: And now that I'm thinking about it, I remember seeing a clip of Bill Hader talking about Kurosawa where he credits him for being one of the first directors from before the New American movement of the 1960's to use non-linear/non-traditional story telling to start off a movie with a meaningful action and have the film kick-start from a singular event and move forward rather than trying to 20 or 30 minutes to establish the characters and plot first. He quotes the beginning of Stray Dog, where the movie begins with a detective immediately discovering he has lost his gun while riding on a crowded train as an example of this method of storytelling.

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u/michaelavolio 6d ago

One of the bonus features on Criterion's release of Rashomon is Robert Altman talking about the film, and he mentions how great Kurosawa is with weather, especially rain.

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u/SurlyRed 6d ago

Yep, filming in the rain is something we associate with Kurosawa.

Also capturing actors running with a parallel camera, so the actor remains in the middle of the frame. There's probably a word for that which I'm not aware of, I'm fond of the technique.

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u/michaelavolio 6d ago

"Parallel tracking shot" may be the term for what you mention, but I'm not positive.

One of the video essays I've seen said Kurosawa got such a great sense of movement with those shots by using a long lens (narrower depth of field), zoomed in, so the background really flies by!

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u/SurlyRed 6d ago

I was reminded of Kurosawa when first watching Paul Thomas Anderson's Lost Track music video by Haim.

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u/michaelavolio 6d ago

Oh, yeah, good call.

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u/Dhb223 6d ago

Would that be the same technique as the Late Spring bike ride or would you use a different term

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u/michaelavolio 6d ago

It's been awhile since I watched Late Spring, but I think it's the same - if I remember correctly, the camera is moving right along with them as they ride their bikes, right? So they stay in about the same place on the screen, but the background moves past behind them? If so, I think the answer is yes - same technique. Though Kurosawa may have done things Ozu didn't do to make the motion seem faster - I don't think Ozu used zooms or long lenses.

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u/Alcatrazepam 6d ago

For sure, his use of weather is incredibly cinematic and so incredibly intertwined to the story and inner life of the characters. The lady in the snow segment of Dreams doesn’t seem to get the attention it deserves imo

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u/michaelavolio 6d ago

I feel like not enough people have seen Dreams - that may be why. I've been meaning to watch it but still haven't yet. I don't think it's as widely seen as a lot of his others.

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u/Alcatrazepam 6d ago

Trust me watch it. I’ve seen it several times, the last being on mushrooms which was incredible. It’s incredible anyway and possibly the most outright beautiful film I’ve seen, maybe tied with tarkovsky’s mirror

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u/incredulitor 5d ago

It's a later film and almost definitely not the one that put him on the map for this, but the examples of blizzards across the Siberian tundra in Durzu Uzula are still a striking example.

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u/therealsylvos 5d ago

Sounds like you might be talking about Every Frame a Painting. His video on Kurosawa is awesome.

https://youtu.be/doaQC-S8de8?si=SHhjj2XWPFUj65fY