This budget-minded set from Criterion's no-frills Eclipse line compiles four early films from Japanese master Akira Kurosawa, who would later gain international acclaim as one of the world's great filmmakers with such classics as Rashomon and Seven Samurai. After a relatively brief apprenticeship in the Japanese studio system, Kurosawa made his directorial debut in 1943 with Sanshiro Sugata, a martial arts drama about the moral education of a scrappy judo student (Susumu Fujita). Although it's a conventional tale with old-fashioned martial arts scenes, Kurosawa already exhibits a firm command of storytelling and delivers a dramatic climax in which the violence of the battle-to-the-death is echoed in the stormy atmosphere and windswept landscape (cut by government censors, the shortened version shown here is the only one surviving). Kurosawa followed up with a wartime propaganda drama, The Most Beautiful (1944), a morale-booster about women working at an optics factory, shot in a semi-documentary style that anticipates his social dramas of the late 1940s and '50s. The sequel Sanshiro Sugata, Part Two (1945) is another wartime effort in which a pair of Americans are the villains. Lastly, The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail (1945) is a short, simple, yet evocative film that transforms an historical incident about a 12th-century feudal lord into the cinematic equivalent of a folk song. Shot on a tight budget with soundstages standing in for forest trails and mountain passes, this was Kurosawa's first genuine samurai movie, although these soldiers exhibit wit and wile rather than swordplay. Previously available only in a 25-film box set, these four examples of early Kurosawa can now be affordably added to world cinema collections. DVD extras are limited to excellent accompanying liner notes by Kurosawa scholar Stephen Prince. Highly recommended. (S. Axmaker)
The First Films of Akira Kurosawa
Criterion, 4 discs, 305 min., in Japanese w/English subtitles, not rated, DVD: $59.95 October 25, 2010
The First Films of Akira Kurosawa
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