Akira Kurosawa for beginners: the Japanese director’s 10 best films, from Seven Samurai to the one that inspired Star Wars

Kurosawa studied the Westerns of John Ford, and put what he learned from them into his films about samurai – which in turn inspired Western remakes

His movies continue to influence filmmaking in Hollywood, with his creative DNA evident in films about anti-heroes and people tasked with a mission

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Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa took what he learned from watching director John Ford’s films and applied it to his own work. In turn, his movies have inspired, and continue to inspire, Hollywood. Photo: Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

Published: 7:00pm, 3 Jun 2020Updated: 10:44am, 17 Jul 2020

Akira Kurosawa was once considered Japan’s most famous film director.

Some of his signature films, such as Seven Samurai (1954) and Yojimbo (1961), were about the samurai – a Japanese warrior caste – and though their code and history were not known outside Japan, Kurosawa was able to make them accessible to outsiders.

He did this in part by studying the Westerns of legendary film director John Ford, from their sweeping landscapes to their ensemble acting that masterfully mixed comedy and high heroics. Kurosawa also found his own John Wayne (the actor who starred in many of Ford’s films) in Toshiro Mifune. The actor had an intensity to him, but could also embody Kurosawa’s comedic portrayals of the macho samurai.

In Kurosawa’s period crime drama Rashomon (1950), Mifune played a bandit who, depending on the telling of the film’s multifaceted story, could be brutal or buffoonish but was always startling in his vitality. The film captivated an international audience that had most likely never seen a Japanese film before.

Toshiro Mifune (left) and Daisuke Kato in a fight scene from Rashomon. Photo: Getty Images

A poster for Shichinin no Samurai, or Seven Samurai. Photo: Getty Images

The film won the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival, the highest prize given to a film at the event. It was an international breakthrough for both Japanese films and Kurosawa.