Rashomon (1950)

There are films that arrive quietly and then reshape everything around them. Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, released in Japan in 1950 by Daiei Film, is one of those rare works. Set in feudal Japan and running a lean 88 minutes, it presents a deceptively simple premise: a samurai is dead, his wife has been assaulted, and four witnesses (including the accused bandit) each offer their own version of what happened. The film takes its title from the crumbling city gate where three men shelter from the rain, and that ruined, liminal space becomes the perfect setting for a story about the rot that can exist at the heart of human testimony. The structure was adapted from two short stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, "Rashōmon" and "In a Grove", and Kurosawa reportedly had to push hard to get the project greenlit, with studio executives reportedly baffled by the script's refusal to offer a single, authoritative truth.

At the time, Kurosawa was already an established name in Japanese cinema, having made well-regarded pictures throughout the 1940s, including Stray Dog just the year before. Rashomon, however, was the film that put him on the international map, winning the Golden Lion at Venice in 1951 and an Honorary Oscar the following year, and introducing Western audiences to Japanese cinema in a way that simply hadn't happened before. It remains one of the most discussed films in any serious study of the medium. The four principal cast members each carry enormous weight here. Toshirō Mifune plays the bandit Tajōmaru with a physicality and wild energy that is genuinely something to watch, all twitching limbs and unpredictable stillness. Machiko Kyō brings a performance of real moral ambiguity as the wife, and Masayuki Mori is quietly effective as the samurai whose death sets everything in motion. Takashi Shimura and Minoru Chiaki, both regulars in Kurosawa's company of actors, anchor the wraparound story at the Rashomon gate with a grounded, world-weary credibility. (Shimura in particular was something of a Kurosawa fixture, and his presence here, as in so many of the director's films of this period, lends the whole thing a sense of moral seriousness.)

For anyone coming to Kurosawa for the first time, or for those working their way through his output alongside reviews like those of Throne of Blood, Ikiru, and High and Low, Rashomon represents something of a fixed point. It is polished but unshowy, formally inventive without ever feeling like a technical exercise, and it asks genuine questions about memory, self-interest, and whether any account of events can ever be trusted. The tagline alone, "The husband, the wife… or the bandit?", sums up the film's playful, troubling ambiguity rather neatly.

An absolute landmark in world cinema. Rashomon didn’t just influence filmmaking it genuinely changed how courtroom procedures work, introducing the concept that multiple perspectives can all be equally valid and unreliable. That’s wild. Kurosawa’s direction is masterful, and Toshiro Mifune delivers a magnetic performance as always. Sure, it’s aged a little in terms of pacing and presentation, but it’s still a riveting, thoughtful watch. A film that makes you question truth itself, how many movies can genuinely say that?

It's worth sitting with that last thought for a moment, because I think it's the thing that keeps me coming back to Rashomon more than any other quality it has. Yes, the pacing occasionally feels like it belongs to another era, and there are moments where the theatrical stylisation might test a modern viewer's patience. But the central provocation, the idea that sincerely held, contradictory accounts can all be simultaneously true and false, hasn't lost any of its force in the seventy-odd years since this was made. If anything, it feels more relevant now than ever. A film that asks you to doubt what you've just seen with your own eyes is doing something genuinely rare. That's not a bad 88 minutes at the pictures.

Rating: ★★★★  | Year: 1950  | Watched: 2025-04-15

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Trailer

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Akira Kurosawa: High and Low (1963) · Stray Dog (1949) · Throne of Blood (1957) · Ikiru (1952)
More with Toshirō Mifune: High and Low (1963) · Stray Dog (1949) · Throne of Blood (1957) · Sanjuro (1962)
More from Japan: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · Blue (1993) · The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959)
More from the 1950s: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Alice in Wonderland (1951) · Letter from Siberia (1957) · Invaders from Mars (1953)
More crime: A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Angst (1983) · Stolen Face (1952) · Cairo Station (1958)
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