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is a 1950 Japanese ''[[jidaigeki]]'' film directed by [[Akira Kurosawa]] from a screenplay he co-wrote with Shinobu Hashimoto. Starring [[Toshiro Mifune]], Machiko Kyō, Masayuki Mori, and [[Takashi Shimura]], it follows various people who describe how a [[samurai]] was murdered in a forest. The plot and characters are based upon Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's short story "In a Grove", with the title and framing story taken from Akutagawa's "Rashōmon". Every element is largely identical, from the murdered [[samurai]] speaking through a [[Shinto psychic|miko]] to the bandit in the forest, the monk, the assault of the wife, and the dishonest retelling of the events in which everyone shows their ideal self by lying.
Production began in 1948 at Kurosawa's regular production firm Toho but was canceled as it was viewed as a financial risk. Two years later, Sōjirō Motoki pitched Rashomon to Daiei Film upon the completion of Kurosawa's Scandal. Daiei initially turned it down but eventually agreed to produce and distribute the film. Principal photography lasted from July 7 to August 17, 1950, taking place primarily in Kyoto on an estimated budget. When creating the film's visual style, Kurosawa and cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa experimented with various methods such as pointing the camera at the sun, which was considered taboo. Post-production took only one week and was decelerated by two fires.
Rashomon premiered at the Imperial Theatre on August 25, 1950, and was distributed throughout Japan the following day, to moderate commercial success, becoming Daiei's fourth highest-grossing film of 1950. Japanese critics praised the experimental direction and cinematography but criticized its adapting of Akutagawa's story and complexity. Upon winning the Golden Lion at the 12th Venice International Film Festival, Rashomon became the first Japanese film to attain significant international reception, garnering critical acclaim and earning roughly abroad. It later won Best Foreign Language Film at the 24th Academy Awards, and was nominated for Best Film at the 6th British Academy Film Awards.
Rashomon is now considered one of the greatest films ever made and among the most influential movies from the 20th century. It pioneered the Rashomon effect, a plot device that involves various characters providing subjective, alternative, and contradictory versions of the same incident. In 1999, critic Andrew Johnston asserted that "the film's title has become synonymous with its chief narrative conceit".
The woodcutter gives evidence that he had found the body of the samurai three days earlier, alongside the man's cap, his wife's hat, pieces of rope, and an amulet. He had been killed with a sword. The monk states that he had seen the samurai on the day of the murder traveling on foot, accompanying his wife on horseback.
A policeman presents the main suspect, a captured ronin named Tajōmaru. In Tajōmaru's version of events, he follows the couple after seeing them in the woods, and lures the samurai away with the prospect of buried treasure. Tying the man up, he returns to rape his wife, who tries to defend herself with a dagger, but ultimately submits. Ashamed of her dishonor, the wife asks Tajōmaru to fight with her husband, saying she will belong to the man who wins. Tajōmaru agrees and kills the samurai (supposedly in an honorable way), only to find that the wife has fled.
The wife, having been found by the police, tells a different story. In her version, Tajōmaru leaves immediately after raping her. She frees her husband from his bonds, but he stares at her with contempt and loathing. The wife approaches him with her dagger, and then faints. She awakens to find her husband dead, with the dagger in his chest. In shock, she wanders through the forest until coming upon a pond in which she unsuccessfully tries to drown herself.
The dead samurai's testimony is heard through a Miko. In his version, after raping the wife, Tajōmaru asks her to marry him. She accepts, but asks Tajōmaru to kill her husband first. Shocked at her fickleness, Tajōmaru gives the samurai the choice to let her go or have her killed. The wife breaks free and flees, with Tajōmaru unsuccessfully giving chase. Some hours later, Tajōmaru returns and releases the samurai, who then kills himself with his wife's dagger. Later, he feels someone remove the dagger from his chest, but cannot tell who.
Back at the Rashōmon gate, the woodcutter proclaims all three stories to be false, and repeats that the samurai was killed with a sword, not a dagger. Pressed by the commoner, the woodcutter admits that he had actually seen the murder but says that he lied to avoid getting into trouble. In the woodcutter's telling, Tajōmaru promises to marry the wife after raping her. She breaks free and releases her husband, expecting him to kill the assailant. However, the samurai refuses to fight, unwilling to risk his life for a ruined woman. Tajōmaru retracts his promise. The wife taunts them both, demanding that they fight for her. They fight unwillingly and clumsily. When the samurai is disarmed and begs for his life, Tajōmaru kills him. The wife flees, and Tajōmaru steals the samurai's sword and limps away.
The woodcutter, the monk, and the commoner are interrupted by the sound of a crying baby. They find a child abandoned at the gate along with a kimono and an amulet. The commoner attempts to steal the items, and the woodcutter rebukes him. The commoner deduces that the woodcutter had lied not because he feared getting into trouble, but because he had stolen the wife's dagger and needed to avoid it appearing in his evidence. The commoner leaves, mocking the others.
The monk attempts to soothe the baby. Having lost his faith in humanity after the events of the trial, when the woodcutter attempts to take the child, he recoils. The woodcutter explains that he intends to raise the child along with his own children, and the monk softens, his faith restored. As the woodcutter leaves with the child in his arms, the rain stops.
Regarding Rashomon, Kurosawa said:
I like silent pictures and I always have... I wanted to restore some of this beauty. I thought of it, I remember in this way: one of the techniques of modern art is simplification, and that I must therefore simplify this film."
As with most films produced in post-war Japan, reports on the budget of Rashomon are scarce and differ. In 1952, Jitsugyo no Nihon Sha said that the film's production cost was , and suggested that advertising and other expenses brought the overall budget to . The following year, the National Board of Review reported that the spent on Kurosawa's Ikiru (1952) was over twice the budget of Rashomon. According to the UNESCO in 1971, Rashomon had a budget of or . Reports on the budget in Western currency vary: The Guinness Book of Movie Facts and Feats cited it as , The New York Times and Stuart Galbraith IV noted a reputed figure, and a handful of other sources have claimed that it cost as high as . Jasper Sharp disputed the latter number in an article for the BBC, since it would have been equal to at the time of the film's production. He added that it "seems highly unlikely given that the 125 million yen, approximately $350,000, that Kurosawa subsequently spent on Seven Samurai four years later made this film by far the most expensive domestic production up to this point".
When Kurosawa shot Rashomon, the actors and the staff lived together, a system Kurosawa found beneficial. He recalls:
We were a very small group and it was as though I was directing Rashomon every minute of the day and night. At times like this, you can talk everything over and get very close indeed.Qtd. in Richie, Films.
The cinematographer, Kazuo Miyagawa, contributed numerous ideas, technical skill and expertise in support for what would be an experimental and influential approach to cinematography. For example, in one sequence, there is a series of single close-ups of the bandit, then the wife and then the husband, which then repeats to emphasize the triangular relationship between them. The World of Kazuo Miyagawa (original title: The Camera Also Acts: Movie Cameraman Miyagawa Kazuo) director unknown. NHK, year unknown. Television/Criterion blu-ray
The use of contrasting shots is another example of the film techniques used in Rashomon. According to Donald Richie, the length of time of the shots of the wife and of the bandit is the same when the bandit is acting barbarically and the wife is hysterically crazy.Richie, Films.
Rashomon had camera shots that were directly into the sun. Kurosawa wanted to use natural light, but it was too weak; they solved the problem by using a mirror to reflect the natural light. The result makes the strong sunlight look as though it has traveled through the branches, hitting the actors. The rain in the scenes at the gate had to be tinted with black ink because camera lenses could not capture the water pumped through the hoses.
Professor Keiko I. McDonald opposes Sato's idea in her essay "The Dialectic of Light and Darkness in Kurosawa's Rashomon." McDonald says the film conventionally uses light to symbolize "good" or "reason" and darkness to symbolize "bad" or "impulse". She interprets the scene mentioned by Sato differently, pointing out that the wife gives herself to the bandit when the sun slowly fades out. McDonald also reveals that Kurosawa was waiting for a big cloud to appear over Rashomon gate to shoot the final scene in which the woodcutter takes the abandoned baby home; Kurosawa wanted to show that there might be another dark rain any time soon, even though the sky is clear at this moment. McDonald regards it as unfortunate that the final scene appears optimistic because it was too sunny and clear to produce the effects of an overcast sky.
Due to setbacks and some lost audio, Mifune returned to the studio after filming to record another line. Recording engineer Iwao Ōtani added it to the film along with the music, using a different microphone.Teruyo Nogami, Waiting on the Weather: Making Movies with Akira Kurosawa, Stone Bridge Press, Inc., 1 September 2006, p. 90, .
The film was scored by Fumio Hayasaka, who is among the most respected of Japanese composers. At the director's request, he scored a bolero for the woman's story. (1982). 9780394509389, Knopf. ISBN 9780394509389
Due to its emphasis on the subjectivity of truth and the uncertainty of factual accuracy, Rashomon has been read by some as an allegory of the defeat of Japan at the end of World War II. James F. Davidson's article, "Memory of Defeat in Japan: A Reappraisal of Rashomon" in the December 1954 issue of the Antioch Review, is an early analysis of the World War II defeat elements.The article has since appeared in some subsequent Rashomon anthologies, including Focus on Rashomon [1] in 1972 and Rashomon (Rutgers Film in Print) [2] in 1987. Davidson's article is referred to in other sources, in support of various ideas. These sources include: The Fifty-Year War: Rashomon, After Life, and Japanese Film Narratives of Remembering a 2003 article by Mike Sugimoto in Japan Studies Review Volume 7 [3] , Japanese Cinema: Kurosawa's Ronin by G. Sham , Critical Reception of Rashomon in the West by Greg M. Smith, Asian Cinema 13.2 (Fall/Winter 2002) 115-28 [4] , Rashomon vs. Optimistic Rationalism Concerning the Existence of "True Facts" [5], Persistent Ambiguity and Moral Responsibility in Rashomon by Robert van Es [6] and Judgment by Film: Socio-Legal Functions of Rashomon by Orit Kamir [7] . Another allegorical interpretation of the film is mentioned briefly in a 1995 article, "Japan: An Ambivalent Nation, an Ambivalent Cinema" by David M. Desser. Here, the film is seen as an allegory of the Nuclear weapon and Japanese defeat. It also briefly mentions James Goodwin's view on the influence of post-war events on the film. However, the film's source material, "In a Grove", was published in 1922, so any postwar allegory would have resulted from Kurosawa's additions rather than the story about the conflicting accounts. Historian and critic David Conrad has noted that the use of rape as a plot point came at a time when American occupation authorities had recently stopped censoring Japanese media and belated accounts of rapes by occupation troops began to appear in Japanese newspapers. Moreover, Kurosawa and other filmmakers were not allowed to make jidaigeki during the early part of the occupation, so setting a film in the distant past was a way to reassert domestic control over cinema.
The film later became Kurosawa's first major international hit. It was released theatrically in the United States by RKO Radio Pictures on December 26, 1951, in both subtitled and dubbed versions. In Europe, the film sold tickets in France and Spain, and 8,292 tickets in other European countries between 1996 and 2020, for a combined total of at least tickets sold in Europe. By June 1952, the film had grossed overseas. Later that same year, Scene reported that the film had earned () overseas, which was more than what all of the previous Japanese movies released overseas had collectively grossed outside of Japan within the past four years. In 1954, Kinema Junpo stated that it grossed in 1951, and reached roughly shortly thereafter. According to the National Board of Review, Rashomon exceeded in the United States alone.
In 2002, the film grossed $46,808 in the US, with an additional earned $96,568 during 2009 to 2010, for a combined in the United States between 2002 and 2010.
However, Daiei and other Japanese corporations disagreed with the choice of Kurosawa's work because it was "not representative of the Japanese movie industry" and felt that a work of Yasujirō Ozu would have been more illustrative of excellence in Japanese cinema. Despite these reservations, the film was screened at the festival.
Before it was screened at the Venice festival, the film initially drew little attention and had low expectations at the festival, as Japanese cinema was not yet taken seriously in the West at the time. But once it had been screened, Rashomon drew an overwhelmingly positive response from festival audiences, praising its originality and techniques while making many question the nature of truth. The film won both the Italian Critics Award and the Golden Lion award—introducing Western audiences, including Western directors, more noticeably to both Kurosawa's films and techniques, such as shooting directly into the sun and using mirrors to reflect sunlight onto the actor's faces.
Tadashi Iijima criticized "its insufficient plan for visualizing the style of the original stories". Tatsuhiko Shigeno of Kinema Junpo opposed Mifune's extensive dialogue as unfitting for the role of a bandit. Akira Iwasaki later cited how he and his contemporaries were "impressed by the boldness and excellence of director Akira Kurosawa's experimental approach within this movie, but couldn't help but notice that there was some confusion in its expression" adding that "I found it difficult to resonate with the agnostic philosophy that the film contains wholeheartedly".
In a collection of interpretations of Rashomon, Donald Richie writes that "the confines of 'Japanese' thought could not contain the director, who thereby joined the world at large".(Richie, 80) Regarding the film's Japanese reception, Kurosawa remarked:
"Japanese are terribly critical of Japanese films, so it is not too surprising that a foreigner should have been responsible for my film being sent to Venice. It was the same way with Japanese woodcuts; it was the foreigners who first appreciated them. We Japanese think too little of our own things. Actually, Rashomon wasn't all that good, I don't think. Yet when people have said to me that its reception was just a stroke of luck, a fluke, I have answered by saying that they only say these things because the film is, after all, Japanese, and then I wonder: Why do we all think so little of our own things? Why don’t we stand up for our films? What are we so afraid of?"
Ed Sullivan gave the film a positive review in Hollywood Citizen-News, calling it "an exciting evening, because the direction, the photography and the performances will jar open your eyes." He praised Akutagawa's original plot, Kurosawa's impactful direction and screenplay, Mifune's "magnificent" villainous performance, and Miyagawa's "spellbinding" cinematography that achieves "visual dimensions that I've never seen in Hollywood photography" such as being "shot through a relentless rainstorm that heightens the mood of the somber drama." Meanwhile, Bosley Crowther from The New York Times gave it a perfect score; stating, "Much of the power of the picture—and it unquestionably has hypnotic power—derives from the brilliance with which the camera of Director Akira Kurosawa has been used. The photography is excellent and the flow of images is expressive beyond words." Time, however, was critical of the film, finding it "draggy" and noted that its score "borrows freely" from Maurice Ravel's Boléro.
In late 1950, the film was vetoed from 's selection list for the 4th Cannes Film Festival over concerns about facing copyright issues for the composition.
Nagata later embraced Rashomon upon it receiving numerous awards and international success. He kept the original Golden Lion that the film received in his office, and had replicas handed to Kurosawa and others who worked on the film. His constant reference to its accomplishments as if he was responsible for the film himself was stated by many. In 1992, Kurosawa remarked that Nagata had cited Rashomon
| March 19, 1953 | Best Art Direction, Black-and-White | So Matsuyama (art direction) H. Matsumoto (set decorator) | ||
| Best Screenplay | Akira Kurosawa Shinobu Hashimoto | |||
| Best Director | Akira Kurosawa | |||
| Italian Critics’ Prize | ||||
Various television shows, including All in the Family (1971–1979), Frasier (1993–2004), and The Acolyte (2024) have made episodes inspired by the film. Some have compared Monster (2023) to the film; however, director Hirokazu Kore-eda claimed its similarities are merely coincidental. Ryan Reynolds' initial proposal for Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) was for it to have a plot similar to Rashomon.
In a 1998 issue of Time Out New York, Andrew Johnston wrote:
Rashomon is probably familiar even to those who haven't seen it, since in movie jargon, the film's title has become synonymous with its chief narrative conceit: a story told multiple times from various points of view. There's much more than that to the film, of course. For example, the way Kurosawa uses his camera...takes this fascinating meditation on human nature closer to the style of silent film than almost anything made after the introduction of sound.
In September 1971, U.S. president Richard Nixon told Hirohito that he admired Rashomon nearly as much as his favorite film, Patton (1970).
Film critic Roger Ebert gave the film four stars out of four and included it in his Great Movies list.
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