1955 Winner, Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto

Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto

Director:        Hiroshi Inagaki

Distributed by:  Toho Studios

Released:  November 1955 (U.S.)

Country:  Japan

From an American perspective, there are few well-known actors who don’t speak English as their primary language.  Americans know folks like Max von Sydow, Gerard Depardieu, and Sophia Loren, but mostly because we have seen them in American films.  Yes, Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune did a few American projects—Grand Prix (1966), Steven Spielberg’s 1941 (1979), and the miniseries Shogun (1981 come to mind—but he is a star for his Japanese work, especially with the great director Akira Kurosawa.  Mifune is truly a special actor, as anyone who has seen The Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), or Yojimbo (1961) knows, but from 1954 to 1956, Mifune worked with Director Hiroshi Inagaki to make the highly-regarded Samurai Trilogy, the first of which, Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto, was awarded a Special/Honorary Academy Award for outstanding foreign film, the last time the award was given non-competitively.

Mifune not buying the damsel-in-distress bit

The story starts with the end of a battle.  Takezo, played by Mifune, and his buddy Matahachi are young up-and-comers, ambitious warriors who want to make names for themselves.  Unfortunately for them, they are on the losing side of the Battle of Sekigahara, a real battle that took place in 1600 Japan.  Being on the losing side means they are on the run, hiding from the victors.  They take up with a mother and daughter who are somehow mixed up with a gang of thieves.  Takezo fights off the bad guys, protecting these two damsels-in-distress. 

Only these women aren’t quite as innocent as they seem.  Almost right away the daughter hits on Takezo, but he resists his urges because of his samurai code, not wanting to dishonor himself.  So now with the daughter rejected, her widowed mother decides to take a crack at him.  Takezo essentially tells the mother that he didn’t want the daughter, so why would he want her, and what’s the deal with all the horny women around here?  In this case, the spurned woman takes things personally, and tells everyone, including Matahachi, that Takezo sexually assaulted her.  Matahachi has a serious girl, Otsu, back home waiting for him, but has had his eye on the daughter and is willing to be less honorable with her when she shifts her interests to him.  He takes the women’s side against his friend, and Takezo, now on the run, thinks his chum has turned on him.  This eventually leads to Takezo being justified in setting his sights on Otsu.  I mean, she's fair game now, right?  As for Matahachi, before long he is wishing he had kept his proverbial samurai sword sheathed.  He has to marry the annoying girl and deal with a nagging mother-in-law.

Yojimbo:  Mifune is much more fun to watch as a ronin

As the title indicates, Samurai I is the first film, and so the story is going to be left unfinished.  The film is entertaining enough as a set-up, but I left unsatisfied, waiting for another time to catch Parts I and II.  Watching Mifune act is always a pleasure, but it seems to me his potential is untapped in this film, admittedly allowing for growth of the character in the next two films.  Samurai I is a good-looking film, with colorful fight scenes and good photography, and the trilogy was an influence on Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies (2003-4).  With the caveat of only having seen the first film, I couldn’t help but think it didn’t compare well to Kurosawa’s samurai films, even though the ones with Mifune are all black and white. Color cannot take the place of masterful direction.

The Title:  宮本武蔵.  The trilogy is based on a Japanese novel from the 1930’s. The titular character, Musashi Miyamoto, who goes by Takezo in this film, was a real person.  He identified himself as Shinmen Musashi-no-Kami Fujiwara no Harunobu in his own book, The Book of Five Rings, written about 1645.  Miyamoto is considered Japan’s most famous and greatest swordsman, probably because he wrote a book about it.  Marketing is everything, even in feudal era Japan.

The culture:  The philosophy of the Samurai is on full display, before the modernization of Japanese society and Western influence.  Incidentally, a “ronin” is a samurai without a master, and is really what the Mifune characters in Seven Samurai and Yojimbo are.

Agenda danger:  Takezo and his pal Matahachi definitely get the short end of the stick in regards to their dealings with the sneaky mother/daughter combo they help.  The false rape accusation doesn’t put the women in the greatest of lights, but Otsu balances out any misogyny the viewer may feel coming on, by being an all-around Japanese girl you’d want to bring home to your mama-san.

Best Picture that year:  Marty.  Ma!  I'm ugly, Ma!

Rating:  I feel like I have to give this one an I for Incomplete.  I’m not sure why the Academy chose to honor this film with the series just getting started—imagine Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring winning Best Picture and not The Return of the King.  Still, if you are looking for some violence with a little romance thrown in and some great acting (like say, From Here to Eternity), you’ll enjoy this one.

1951 Winner, Rashomon

Rashomon

Director:        Akira Kurosawa

Distributed by:  Toho Studios

Released:  August 1950

Country:  Japan

What is Truth?

Is Truth unchanging law?

We both have truths.

Are mine the same as yours?

--Pontius Pilate, Jesus Christ Superstar

Moral relativism is a belief that there is no one truth, that each point of view has a truth is as true as another.  But when you think of it, no one can make a case for relativism with any certainty because to the arguer, it could be just as true that he is dead wrong.  Certainly, it is true, then, that there is one Truth.  It’s in our perceptions and biases, though, that we see and experience this one Truth, and therein lies the problem.  The Academy awarded Rashomon the Best Foreign Film Honorary Award in 1950 for telling a story that examines this concept.

The bandit hamming it up at the tribunal

This was the film that put famed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa on the map, and the iconic movie has become part of the culture, lending its name to the “Rashomon effect” concept of perceiving the truth through different lenses.  The story is extremely simple:  A samurai and his wife are traveling through the woods of 12^th century Japan, she on horseback and he walking beside her.  A bandit, played by Kurosawa regular Toshiro Mifune, comes out of hiding and attacks them for their loot.  The bandit leaves the scene, having taken the samurai’s money and life, and having violated the wife.  He is eventually captured and has to tell what happened to a tribunal who will decide his fate.

Takashi Shimura as the Woodcutter

Here is where the multiple versions of the Truth are put forth.  The bandit and the woman, who is also found, give witness to what they experienced, and their stories are very different.  Oddly, a third version of what happened is given by the dead man through a medium, with all three versions contradicting each other as to who is truly at fault.  A seemingly objective opinion is later told to us by a woodcutter, played by another stock Kurosawa player, Takashi Shimura.  The woodcutter saw everything but never reported his completely different version to the tribunal.  His motive for not providing testimony just might show that his version isn’t quite as objective he would lead us to believe.

Beside the philosophical angle, there is a good reason this film is so well-regarded.  Firstly, Kurosawa is masterful in the way he presents the story.  The story is introduced at a building/gate called Rashomon during a severe downpour (Kurosawa likes rain!), with Shimura’s woodcutter discussing what happened with a Buddhist priest, played by still another Kurosawa regular, Minoru Chiaki.  Kurosawa uses the elements of the rain and sun to illustrate moral peril of the whole concept of there being multiple truths.  The way he paces the film is perfect, with the story told in parts, jumping back and forth from the hazy, muggy grove where the crimes took place to the torrential loudness of rain at the gate.

Machiko Kyō as the wife, testifying

Additionally, the acting performances are as good as it gets.  Mifune’s frequent overacting might be off-putting at first, until you realize that the reason for it is that his persona is being related by another’s perspective.  Shimura, who best shines in 1952’s Ikiru (a personal favorite of mine from Kurosawa), and Chiaki provide a solid base for the film.  But Machiko Kyō, as the wife (and who also appeared in the 1953 winner Gate of Hell), gives perhaps the most impressive performance, or more accurately, performances, with subtle but discernible differences in her character showing up in the different versions of what happened.

Rashomon is the film that got me watching Kurosawa films long ago, and over the years, I would have a hard time sticking to one favorite:  Seven Samurai, Ikiru, Throne of Blood, Yojimbo, and Ran have all topped my list over time (and Dersu Uzula won Best Foreign Film in 1972). Each has its own greatness and I could make a valid, subjective argument as to why each should be considered Kurosawa’s best.  But objectively speaking, Rashomon was the movie that affected me first and made me want to see the others.  There is no disputing that Truth.

"We both have truths.  Are mine the same as yours?"

The Title: 羅生門  The name comes from a short story by Japanese writer Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, and is the name of an actual gate in Tokyo, but the story is adapted from another Akutagawa short story, In a Grove, published in 1922.

The culture:  The setting of the film isn’t as important as the story, which has been told in other forms over the years, including the 1964’s The Outrage, starring Paul Newman as the bandit.  But the “Japanese” element of the film is important to this film, with the juxtaposition of the wealth and status of the samurai and his wife to the ruthless bandit.  There is a falseness to the honor of the higher class characters and a central moral strength in the Buddhist priest.

Agenda danger:  Pope John Paul II wrote, “Although each individual has a right to be respected in his own journey in search of the truth, there exists a prior moral obligation, and a grave one at that, to seek the truth and to adhere to it once it is known.”  I think Kurosawa would agree.  The priest in the film laments, “Because men are weak, they lie to deceive themselves.”  It is the central horror of the film that Truth is so malleable.

Best Picture that year:  An American in Paris.

Rating:  German director Werner Herzog called Rashomon “the closest to ‘perfect’ a film can get.”  I don’t disagree.