Imagine this. It's September 1951. You're director Akira Kurosawa, and you have just found out your film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. But there's a catch. You didn't even know your film had been entered into competition.Well, that's exactly what happened.So when Rashomon won the festival's top prize, it surprised Kurosawa, Daiei Studios, and the international film world with its success.The film's entry into Venice came via Giuliana Stramigioli, a representative of Italiafilm who had seen Rashomon while in Japan and convinced a reluctant Daiei to submit it. "I was shocked by Rashomon," Stramigioli said later (via Wikipedia). "Regardless of whether it would win an award, the first condition is that it would generate a great deal of buzz. In that sense, Rashomon is a very distinctive film, and because it is so Japanese, I thought it was entirely appropriate."And boy, was she right about that buzz. Rashomon Credit: Daiei In Rashomon, a samurai gets murdered, his wife gets assaulted, and we hear the story from multiple witnesses who all remember it completely differently. Who’s telling the truth? It was revolutionary, especially for that period, and could be called one of the first detective stories to come out of Japanese cinema. Back in Japan, Daiei had disagreed with submitting Kurosawa's work. They feared that the film was too unconventional and Japanese in style to appeal to Western audiences. "On one hand Japanese considered it so indigenous that they did not want to bring it to the...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - Yesterday