Akira Kurosawa’s classic, time-shifting drama about a fatal encounter between a samurai, his wife, and a bandit in a desolate forest received an Honorary Foreign Language Film Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1951. With striking black-and-white cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa and Oscar-nominated Art Direction (Black-and-White), not to mention Toshiro Mifune’s ferocious performance, Rashomon remains one of global cinema’s most influential films.

DIRECTOR: Akira Kurosawa. WRITTEN BY: Akira Kurosawa, Shinobu Hashimoto. CAST: Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura. 1950. 88 min. Japan. B&W. Japanese. 35mm. Restored by the Academy Film Archive, The National Film Center of the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, and Kadokawa Pictures, Inc.

All film screenings in the Director’s Inspiration: Spike Lee series are available here.  

Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation.