Rashomon

Rashomon (1950) tells one killing four times and no two accounts agree. A samurai is found dead in a forest, his wife has been assaulted, and a bandit has been captured. In court the bandit says: we fought, it was a fair duel, I won. The wife says something entirely different happened. The dead samurai, speaking through a medium, says no, he killed himself. Then a woodcutter who watched it secretly gives his account, and it differs from all of them. The film does not say which is true. What it says is more uncomfortable: all four are lying, and all four are lying to appear more honourable. The bandit wants to look brave, the wife innocent, the samurai dignified, the woodcutter honest. The structure entered the language; conflicting testimony is still called the Rashomon effect. The cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa turned the camera directly at the sun, which had not been done before, and the play of light in the forest comes from that. It won the Golden Lion at Venice, and Kurosawa did not even know it had been entered. That prize began the recognition of Japanese cinema in the West. Toshiro Mifune plays the bandit. It runs 88 minutes. Good for: film history, narrative structure, and Kurosawa. Less good for: the acting is deliberately heightened, rape is at the centre of it, and the silent era influences take getting used to.