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/dunecello 6d ago

This was accidental but the first example of the high-pressure blood trope in film was in Sanjuro (1962) where a prop malfunction caused a stabbed character's blood to shoot out. Kurosawa kept in the take and the trope was born.

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u/Alcatrazepam 6d ago

This may be my favorite example so far and I’m loving all of them. Thank you for sharing that

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u/Lustandwar 6d ago

also fun fact: the studio that produced Yojimbo (Toho which Kurasawa was contracted with at the time) sued Sergio Leone for the first in his Dollars Trilogy, Fistful of Dollars, because it was literally almost shot for shot remake just set in Cowboy world. And this, possibly made a lot of people view Leone as a hack because he had not made many movies prior. So to prove people wrong, Leone made a badass sequel that is completely original and a third film that is to this day regarded as one of the best films of all time (my personal favorite is For A Few Dollars More though for personal reasons).

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u/zen_arcade 6d ago

Iirc the producers made up a series of half assed excuses to pretend it wasn’t a ripoff of Yojimbo (it totally is).

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u/Alcatrazepam 5d ago edited 5d ago

I love Leone’s work for the same reason Tarantino loves it, as well as DePaplma. I personally disagree with them being outright plagiarism (assuming the originals are credited/acknowledged)but see that kind of “remake”/pastiche/reinterpretation as a labor of love. Sometimes it’s like something between a linguistic transition, parody and interpretation. I think Kubrick said “you can’t make anything new, but you can make something more interesting.” I’m paraphrasing but I like the idea. This is kind of off topic but “f is for fake” by Orson Welles explores the subject of plagiarism in an interesting way. It still takes a lot of artistic skill and craftsman ship to plagiarize a classic painting. I could go on forever about this obviously, but while I think it’s fucked up Leone’s studio tried to stiff Kurosawa, they’re still very different and impressive works of art. It is like translating it to a different culturally cinematic dialect. Kurosawa doing Shakespeare with Throne of Blood comes to mind. Anyway, I would never consider Leone a hack

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u/Lustandwar 4d ago edited 2d ago

It's interesting to bring up. I never see Leone as a hack either but agree it's difficult for creatives to protect their work (especially when something like AI comes along at this day and age). But a straight up shot by shot copy is kind of the same thing, doesnt matter if you change the character. That being said, we still got great cinema out of it. Just have to keep having that discussion as long as there is art.

edit: grammar

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u/Alcatrazepam 2d ago

Agreed, I’m always just glad to see art talked about with civility and passion