Sanjuro in 35mm

Kurosawa’s first color film, and his initial collaboration with cinematographer Takao Saito, Dodes’ka-den is a heartbreaking, tender series of vignettes depicting the inhabitants of a settlement atop a landfill on the outskirts of Tokyo. Young Roku-chan is obsessed with trams, and his story bookends this complicated collection of lives lived on the margins of society. Based on Shugoro Yamamoto’s 1962 collection of stories The Town Without Seasons—Kurosawa’s third adaptation of the novelist’s work after Sanjuro (1962) and Red Beard (1965)—the filmmaker’s most loosely woven picture to date was also the first and only release by Yonki-no-kai Productions, a collective of four directors formed to support Kurosawa’s uncharacteristically idiosyncratic vision. Dodes’ka-den was nominated at the 44th Academy Awards in the category formerly known as Foreign Language Film, now International Feature Film, marking the tenth nomination for the country in this category.

Kingo Gondo (Toshiro Mifune), an executive of a prominent shoe business, mortgages his life to leverage an acquisition of the company. He is about to make the move when he receives a call from a man who has abducted his son, Jun, asking for a significant ransom. When it’s discovered that the son of Gondo’s loyal chauffeur was mistakenly kidnapped instead of Jun, he is still asked to pay, placing him in a moral dilemma. High and Low set a benchmark for the police procedural genre; influenced by noir, the film portrays the harsh realities and class divide of a country still grappling with the trauma of war.

Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune’s grand marathon of collaborations, which yielded numerous masterpieces, faces its finish line with a three-hour exploration of moral values and existential contemplation of humankind, led by another heartfelt performance by Mifune as a humble and compassionate clinic director, aka Red Beard. He, welcomes a young doctor, Yasumoto (Yuzo Kayama), into his small-town practice, only to discover that his protégé is arrogant, blinded by ambition, and reluctant to serve patients with low social standing. Kurosawa examines humanity with a thoughtful gaze, gently excavating the innate goodness of humankind through lessons from both life and death.

Based on Inside a Pot by distinguished female novelist Kiyoko Murata, Kurosawa’s penultimate film centers on widow Kane (Sachiko Murase), whose husband was killed by the atomic bomb dropped by the Americans on Nagasaki. Now a grandmother, Kane welcomes her grandchildren to her rural home, where the impact of her decades of silence becomes impossible to ignore.

“Making an antiwar picture isn’t a matter of re-creating battle scenes,” Kurosawa said in 1991. The director instead relies on the sweltering summer heat and softly spoken observances to convey the impacts of generational trauma caused by wartime tragedies. American actor Richard Gere, who appears as one of Kane’s nephews, agreed to make the picture on the modest condition that his name was not used to sell the film.

In person: Anne McKnight, associate professor of Japanese and comparative literature

In person: Academy Collection and Preservation Executive Vice President Matt Severson

In person: Kerim Yasar, associate professor of East Asian languages and cultures

“Any description of dreams in mere words cannot capture their expressive power.”

—Akira Kurosawa, 1993  

Inspired by a passage in a novel by Fjodor Dostoevsky “where he talks about dreams and the fact that they express our deepest fears and greatest hopes,” Dreams is a visually sumptuous entry in the latter half of the filmmaker’s career. Divided into eight chapters reflecting dreams from Kurosawa’s childhood through his late seventies, this impressionistic wonder was released, appropriately, the year after the director received an Honorary Oscar from the Academy “for cinematic accomplishments that have inspired, delighted, enriched, and entertained worldwide audiences and influenced filmmakers throughout the world.”

The 50-year career of one of history’s greatest filmmakers concludes with this heartwarming finale from 1993, dedicated to celebrated and respected writer and educator Hyakken Uchida. After Uchida announces his retirement from teaching, his students host an annual gathering, the “Not Yet Banquet” to celebrate his life and career. Composed of a series of poignant episodes, Kurosawa invites us into a world where beauty can be found, despite the inevitable pitfalls of reality, in genuine connection, loyalty, and respect for all living creatures.