Sanshiro Sugata

The 1880s, Japan. Sanshiro Sugata comes to the city to learn jujutsu and attaches himself to a master. Then he sees a man called Yano put several men down in one night; this is a new method, called judo. Yano takes him as a pupil. Sanshiro is strong and fast and a brawler; his teacher is trying to teach him not technique but when to stop. Akira Kurosawa directs in his first film, from Tsuneo Tomita's novel. It was made during the war and ran into the censors. The board found it too western and too entertaining; passages were cut and the original version circulates today incomplete. Its best known scene is at the pond. Sanshiro holds on to a post in the water one night and stays until morning; there he understands what his teacher wants of him. Elements that would settle into Kurosawa's later films begin here: weather as part of the narrative, the use of wind and grass, and a final fight staged in open country. Judo was newly established in Japan at the time and the conflict between jujutsu and judo in the film rests on a real historical argument. A sequel was made in 1945 and Kurosawa said he made it reluctantly. Who it is for: anyone curious about Kurosawa's beginning and Japanese martial arts films. Who it is not for: the prints are incomplete, the narrative jumps, and the character development is passed over quickly.