One of the greatest cinematic artists ever, and a true visionary, Kurosawa defined the art and craft of film making like few others, before or after him. In a career that spanned over half a century, he made movies that inspire, entertain and awe cinema lovers even today.

Akira Kurosawa wrote stories for his own films (Seven Samurai ), adopted novels (Yojimbo , Lower Depths) and literary writings (The Idiot, Ikiru), and even retold works of great playwrights like Shakespeare (Ran, Throne of Blood , The Bad Sleep Well).

Criticized back home for being too western in his approach (also perhaps because he regularly cited American John Ford as his influence), Kurosawa was applauded by the rest of the world that awarded him with a best foreign film Oscar, an Oscar for lifetime achievement, the highest honours at Cannes and Venice and France’s highest civilian award: Legion d’Honneur. Despite the criticisms, the influence of traditional Japanese Kabuki and Noh theatres and Jidaigeki genre are apparent in his movies.

Kurosawa worked with and became friends with a number of actors and technicians who worked with him in multiple projects. The most famous being with Toshirô Mifune, who did not want to be an actor but ended up starring in most of his movies, and Ishiro Honda (director of the classic Godzilla, which Kurosawa himself wanted to make).

Kurosawa devised plot and film making techniques that are common place today; use of slow motion for dramatic flair, use of telephoto lenses to prevent intrusion for actors, multiple cameras for the same action, use of weather to heighten mood etc. He was a hard taskmaster and a perfectionist who spent endless hours and efforts to achieve the effects he had visualised.

The universality of themes in Kurosawa films is evident from the hundreds of inspired remakes around the world. Many of these have gone on to become blockbuster hits; ‘Star Wars’ (inspired by ‘Hidden Fortress’), ‘The Magnificent Seven’ (a western take on ‘Seven Samurai’), ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ (frame by frame copy of ‘Yojimbo’).

Though Kurosawa tasted both commercial and critical success in his life, a commercially lean period in the 70’s, led him to attempt suicide. Fully recovering from it, he made a film with Russian collaboration ‘Dersu Uzala’, that won the Oscar for best foreign language film.

Kurosawa had countless admirers during his lifetime itself. Few of them, directors George Lucas and Francis Ford Copolla, helped acquire finances for his next film, Kagemusha.

This great auteur, who framed the past, showed the humanism in the present and lent celluloid to his dreams, passed away in 1998, after ensuring that his excellence will become a legacy that will live forever.

© Palador Pictures Pvt. Ltd., 2008