RASHOMON at Japan Society NY this Wednesday, February 1st, 2023

Japan Society
Presents

Toshiro Mifune and, behind his shoulder, Machiko Kyo

Rashomon

Directed by Akira Kurosawa

With Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori

Japan, 1950, 88 minutes
35mm, b&w, in Japanese with English subtitles
 

When: Wednesday, February 1st 2023 at 7:00 pm

Where: Japan Society NY
333 East 47th Street
New York, NY 10017
Map

Tickets

 
A riveting psychological thriller that investigates the nature of truth and the meaning of justice, Rashomon is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made. Based on a story by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, father of the modern Japanese short novel, Rashomon follows four people who give different accounts of a samurai's murder—brilliantly presented by director Akira Kurosawa with striking imagery and an ingenious use of flashbacks.

 

Rashomon is generally recognized that as the film that brought Japanese filmmaking into the ranks of World Cinema when it won the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. (In Something Like An Autobiography, Kurosawa wrote that his next film, 1951s The Idiot, did so poorly that Daiei "rescinded its offer for me to do another film with them." Rashomon's success at Venice -- where he didn't even know it had been submitted --  spared him "from having to eat cold rice" and allowed him to continue on the incredible filmmaking bath that followed.)

 

Rashomon also  received an Honorary Award from the Board of Governors at the 1952 Academy Awards as the most outstanding foreign language film released in the United States during 1951. (It was not until 1956, at the 29th Academy Awards, that a competitive Academy Award of Merit, known as the Best Foreign Language Film Award, was created for non-English speaking films.)

 

This screening of Rashomon is part of Japan Society's MONTHLY CLASSICS film series. It is also part of a series of programs celebrating the life and work of the prolific Japanese author Ryunosuke Akutagawa. Upcoming: AKUTAGAWA—an amalgam of his best-known stories told through traditional Japanese puppetry (Feb. 23–25).

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