Jan 21st  
Rashomon***   

(Jap 1950)            

A bandit rapes the wife of a Samurai who is later also killed, but the story has a different slant to it when told from various different viewpoints.
Fascinating landmark drama by Kurosawa, a typically quirky effort about dishonesty and the fallibility of different human beings when witnesses to the same event. Kurosawa uses his camera vibrantly in the earlier flashbacks, then settles into something more sedate and typically Japanese as the drama develops (and is re-told.) Ultimately it doesn't hang together, but that's the point.

w, d: Akira Kurosawa, based on the novel "Inside a Bush" by Ryonosuke Akutagawa.
s: Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki, Kichijiro Ueda.
ph: Kazuo Matsuyama.
m: Takashi Matsuyama.

Preceded by:
Tom and Jerry in 
Safety Second*
(US 1950. 7m.; d: William Hanna, Joseph Barbera; p: Fred Quimby.)

RASHOMON (1950). Is this the girl (Machiko Kyo) hiding behind the bandit (Toshiro Mifune) who has just raped her out of shame, or secret pleasure? In that sense, Kurosawa could be saying something about Japan's own guilty conscience when it embraced Westernisation in the 1950s against its own traditionalism.