is a 1950 Japanese jidaigeki (period drama) psychological thriller film directed by Akira Kurosawa from a screenplay he co-wrote with Shinobu Hashimoto. Starring Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyō, Masayuki Mori, and Takashi Shimura, it follows various people who describe how a samurai was murdered in a forest. The plot and characters are based upon Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's short story "In a Grove", with the title and framing story taken from Akutagawa's "Rashōmon". Every element is largely identical, from the murdered samurai speaking through a Shinto psychic to the bandit in the forest, the monk, the assault of the wife, and the dishonest retelling of the events in which everyone shows their ideal self by lying.
Production began in 1948 at Kurosawa's regular production firm Toho but was canceled as it was viewed as a financial risk. Two years later, Sōjirō Motoki pitched Rashomon to Daiei Film upon the completion of Kurosawa's Scandal. Daiei initially turned it down but eventually agreed to produce and distribute the film. Principal photography lasted from July 7 to August 17, 1950, taking place primarily in Kyoto on an estimated budget. When creating the film's visual style, Kurosawa and cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa experimented with various methods such as pointing the camera at the sun, which was considered taboo. Post-production took only one week.
Rashomon premiered at the Imperial Theatre on August 25, 1950, and was distributed throughout Japan the following day, to moderate commercial success, becoming Daiei's fourth highest-grossing film of 1950. Japanese critics praised the experimental direction and cinematography but criticized its adapting of Akutagawa's story and complexity. Upon winning the Golden Lion at the 12th Venice International Film Festival, Rashomon became the first Japanese film to attain significant international reception, garnering critical acclaim and earning roughly abroad. It later won Best Foreign Language Film at the 24th Academy Awards, and was nominated for Best Film at the 6th British Academy Film Awards.
Rashomon is now considered one of the greatest films ever made and among the most influential movies from the 20th century. It pioneered the Rashomon effect, a plot device that involves various characters providing subjective, alternative, and contradictory versions of the same incident. In 1999, critic Andrew Johnston asserted that "the film's title has become synonymous with its chief narrative conceit".
Plot In Heian-era Kyoto, a woodcutter and a Buddhist monk, taking shelter from a downpour under the Rashōmon gate, have just returned from giving evidence in a trial about the murder of a samurai, and are baffled at the conflicting stories they have heard. They are joined by a commoner, who asks to hear what happened. The film intercuts the discussions of the three men at the gate with flashbacks of witness testimonies and reconstructions of the events described.
The woodcutter gives evidence that he had found the body of the samurai three days earlier, alongside the man's cap, his wife's hat, pieces of rope, and an amulet. He had been killed with a sword. The monk states that he had seen the samurai on the day of the murder traveling on foot, accompanying his wife on horseback.
A policeman presents the main suspect, a captured bandit named Tajōmaru. In Tajōmaru's version of events, he follows the couple after seeing them in the woods, and lures the samurai away with the prospect of buried treasure. Tying the man up, he returns to rape his wife, who tries to defend herself with a dagger, but ultimately submits. Ashamed of her dishonor, the wife asks Tajōmaru to fight with her husband, saying she will belong to the man who wins. Tajōmaru agrees and kills the samurai (supposedly in an honorable way), only to find that the wife has fled.
The wife, having been found by the police, tells a different story. In her version, Tajōmaru leaves immediately after raping her. She frees her husband from his bonds, but he stares at her with contempt and loathing. The wife approaches him with her dagger, and then faints. She awakens to find her husband dead, with the dagger in his chest. In shock, she wanders through the forest until coming upon a pond in which she unsuccessfully tries to drown herself.
The dead samurai's testimony is heard through a Shinto medium. In his version, after raping the wife, Tajōmaru asks her to marry him. She accepts, but asks Tajōmaru to kill her husband first. Shocked at her fickleness, Tajōmaru gives the samurai the choice to let her go or have her killed. The wife breaks free and flees, with Tajōmaru unsuccessfully giving chase. Some hours later, Tajōmaru returns and releases the samurai, who then kills himself with his wife's dagger. Later, he feels someone remove the dagger from his chest, but cannot tell who.
Back at the Rashōmon gate, the woodcutter proclaims all three stories to be false, and repeats that the samurai was killed with a sword, not a dagger. Pressed by the commoner, the woodcutter admits that he had actually seen the murder but says that he lied to avoid getting into trouble. In the woodcutter's telling, Tajōmaru promises to marry the wife after raping her. She breaks free and releases her husband, expecting him to kill the assailant. However, the samurai refuses to fight, unwilling to risk his life for a ruined woman. Tajōmaru retracts his promise. The wife taunts them both, demanding that they fight for her. They fight unwillingly and clumsily. When the samurai is disarmed and begs for his life, Tajōmaru kills him. The wife flees, and Tajōmaru steals the samurai's sword and limps away.
The woodcutter, the monk, and the commoner are interrupted by the sound of a crying baby. They find a child abandoned at the gate along with a kimono and an amulet. The commoner attempts to steal the items, and the woodcutter rebukes him. The commoner deduces that the woodcutter had lied not because he feared getting into trouble, but because he had stolen the wife's dagger and needed to avoid it appearing in his evidence. The commoner leaves, mocking the others.
The monk attempts to soothe the baby. Having lost his faith in humanity after the events of the trial, when the woodcutter attempts to take the child, he recoils. The woodcutter explains that he intends to raise the child along with his own children, and the monk softens, his faith restored. As the woodcutter leaves with the child in his arms, the rain stops.
Cast
Toshiro Mifune as Tajōmaru, the bandit Masayuki Mori as Takehiro Kanazawa, the samurai Machiko Kyō as Masago, Kanazawa's wife Takashi Shimura as the woodcutter Minoru Chiaki as the monk as the commoner Noriko Honma as the miko Daisuke Katō as the policeman
Production
Development According to Donald Richie, Akira Kurosawa began developing the film circa 1948, and both Kurosawa's regular production studio Toho and its financing company, Toyoko Company, refused to produce the film, with the latter fearing it would be a precarious production. Following the completion of Scandal, Sōjirō Motoki offered the script to Daiei who also initially rejected it.
Regarding Rashomon, Kurosawa said: I like silent pictures and I always have... I wanted to restore some of this beauty. I thought of it, I remember in this way: one of the techniques of modern art is simplification, and that I must therefore simplify this film."
As with most films produced in post-war Japan, reports on the budget of Rashomon are scarce and differ. In 1952, Jitsugyo no Nihon Sha said that the film's production cost was , and suggested that advertising and other expenses brought the overall budget to . The following year, the National Board of Review reported that the spent on Kurosawa's Ikiru (1952) was over twice the budget of Rashomon. According to the UNESCO in 1971, Rashomon had a budget of or . Reports on the budget in Western currency vary: The Guinness Book of Movie Facts and Feats cited it as , The New York Times and Stuart Galbraith IV noted a reputed figure, and a handful of other sources have claimed that it cost as high as . Jasper Sharp disputed the latter number in an article for the BBC, since it would have been equal to at the time of the film's production. He added that it "seems highly unlikely given that the 125 million yen, approximately $350,000, that Kurosawa subsequently spent on Seven Samurai four years later made this film by far the most expensive domestic production up to this point".
Writing
Kurosawa wrote the screenplay while staying at a ryokan in Atami with his friend Ishirō Honda, who was scripting The Blue Pearl (1951). The pair regularly commenced writing their respective films at 9:00 a.m. and would give feedback on each other's work after each completed roughly twenty pages. According to Honda, Kurosawa soon refused to read The Blue Pearl after a couple of days but "of course, he still made me read his".
Assistant directors Tai Kato, Mitsuo Wakasugi and Tokuzō Tanaka did not understand the script, and asked Kurosawa to explain it for them. Kato, however, was unconvinced, and he clashed with Kurosawa on set, who put him in charge of creating the trailer for the movie."Akira Kurosawa and Fumio Hayasaka: Samurai Like the Wind" (2005);."Toad's Oil" (1990); Akira Kurosawa
Casting Kurosawa had initially wanted the cast of eight to consist entirely of previous collaborators, specifically counseling Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura. He also suggested that Setsuko Hara—who had played the lead in No Regrets for Our Youth (1946)—portray the wife, but she was not cast since her brother-in-law, filmmaker Hisatora Kumagai, was against it; Hara would subsequently appear in Kurosawa's next film, The Idiot (1951). Daiei executives then recommended Machiko Kyō, believing she would make the film easier to market. Kurosawa agreed to cast her upon seeing her show enthusiasm for the project by shaving her eyebrows before going for a make-up test.
When Kurosawa shot Rashomon, the actors and the staff lived together, a system Kurosawa found beneficial. He recalls: We were a very small group and it was as though I was directing Rashomon every minute of the day and night. At times like this, you can talk everything over and get very close indeed.Qtd. in Richie, Films.
Filming Due to its small budget the film had only three sets: the gate; the forest scene; and the police courtyard. Filming began on 7 July 1950 and ended on 17 August. After a week's work on post-production, it was released in Tokyo on 25 August. The rain in the scenes at the gate had to be tinted with black ink because camera lenses could not capture the water pumped through the hoses.
Cinematography
The film's cinematography was handled by Kazuo Miyagawa, who would later work with Kurosawa on Yojimbo. Having previously shot movies in low-key tones, Miyagawa was interested in shooting Rashomon in high-key tones, with lessening the gray tones, with the Kebiishi garden being shot in white tones, the Rashomon gate in black tones and the forest in black and white tones. Miyagawa utilized Fujifilm stock, which was considered inferior to Kodak film stock, but it also produced the strong contrasts that he and Kurosawa wanted. In order to obtain sharp images, lenses that ranged from 32mm to 75mm were used and mounted on Miyagawa's Mitchell NC camera.
For the forest sequences where electrical lights could not be utilized, Miyagawa had eight mirrors to reflect natural sunlight. A baseball net was stretched several meters above the ground where Miyagawa put leaves and branches on it, and were adjusted with a long bamboo pole, so that the shadows of the leaves fell in the faces of the actors.The World of Kazuo Miyagawa (original title: The Camera Also Acts: Movie Cameraman Miyagawa Kazuo) director unknown. NHK, year unknown. Television/Criterion blu-ray
Lighting