Films › Directing
Rashomon
Directed by Akira Kurosawa, 1950
The same event is staged four times with different blocking, performance register and camera behaviour, so the contradiction is carried visually rather than by narration. Kazuo Miyagawa shot directly into the sun through the forest canopy, which was considered impossible at the time. Camera movement through the woods is fast, roving and subjective. The structure has been so widely copied that it is now a genre term. Composer Fumio Hayasaka scores the bandit's version with aggressive percussion and the woodcutter's version with near silence, letting music signal unreliability before the audience consciously registers it. Kurosawa reportedly told Miyagawa to shoot into direct sunlight using a mirror to protect the lens, a technical risk that produced the film's signature dappled forest light. The nested framing device, story within story within courtroom testimony, remains a structural blueprint for any filmmaker building an unreliable-narrator project today.
What to watch for
Watch how the performances change between versions while the dialogue stays close to identical.
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