Throne of Blood
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| Throne of Blood | |
 Original Japanese poster |
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| Directed by | Akira Kurosawa |
|---|---|
| Produced by | Sojiro Motoki Akira Kurosawa |
| Written by | Shinobu Hashimoto Ryuzo Kikushima Akira Kurosawa Hideo Oguni William Shakespeare (play) |
| Starring | Toshirō Mifune Isuzu Yamada Takashi Shimura |
| Music by | Masaru Sato |
| Editing by | Akira Kurosawa |
| Distributed by | Toho |
| Release date(s) | 15 January 1957 (Japan) 22 November 1961 (USA) |
| Running time | 105 min. |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
Throne of Blood (蜘蛛巣城 Kumonosu-jō, literally "Spider Web Castle") is a 1957 film directed by Akira Kurosawa, which transposes the plot of William Shakespeare's play Macbeth to feudal Japan. It is regarded as one of Kurosawa's best films, and by many critics as one of the best film adaptations of Macbeth, despite having almost none of the play's script.
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[edit] Plot
Kurosawa follows the events of Macbeth, although Kurosawa’s Washizu Taketoki (played by Toshirō Mifune) is arguably less evil than Macbeth. As with the play, the main character's comrade (General Miki, played by Minoru Chiaki) is killed when he is perceived as a threat to the throne, only to return as a ghost. There is no Macduff character in this picture; hence Washizu does not meet his end in a duel. Instead, in a spectacular scene he is shot by his own archers and stumbles forward like a porcupine before being shot in the neck. He slowly descends the stairs and dies, collapsing dramatically on the fog-soaked ground.
[edit] Production
The castle exteriors were built and shot high up on Mt. Fuji. The castle courtyard was constructed at Toho's Tamagawa studio, with volcanic soil brought from Fuji so that the ground would match. The interiors were shot in a smaller Tokyo studio. The forest scenes were a combination of actual Fuji forest and studio shots in Tokyo. Washizu's mansion was shot in the Izu peninsula.[1]
In Kurosawa's own words, "It was a very hard film to make. We decided that the main castle set had to be built on the slope of Mount Fuji, not because I wanted to show this mountain but because it has precisely the stunted landscape that I wanted. And it is usually foggy. I had decided that I wanted lots of fog for this film... Making the set was very difficult because we didn't have enough people and the location was so far from Tokyo. Fortunately, there was a U.S. Marine Corps base nearby and they helped a great deal; also a whole MP battalion helped us out. We all worked very hard indeed, clearing the ground, building the set. Our labor on this steep fog-bound slope, I remember, absolutely exhausted us; we almost got sick."[2]
Washizu's famous death scene, in which his own archers turn upon him and fill his body with arrows, was in fact performed with real arrows, a choice made to help Mifune produce realistic facial expressions of fear. The arrows seen to impact the wooden walls were not superimposed or faked by special effects (this is disputed, however, as cables are visible several times during the sequence and reverse motion photography was probably used), but instead shot by choreographed archers. During filming, Mifune waved his arms, ostensibly because his character was trying to brush away the arrows embedded in the planks; this indicated to the archers the direction in which Mifune wanted to move.
[edit] Reception
The movie has received a great reception from literary critics, despite the many liberties it takes with the original play. The American literary critic Harold Bloom judged it "the most successful film version of Macbeth.[3] Poet T. S. Eliot pronounced Throne of Blood his favorite film.[4]
[edit] References
- ^ Donald Richie. "Kurosawa on Kurosawa." Sight and Sound, Spring-Summer and Fall-Winter, 1964.
- ^ Ibid.
- ^ Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. New York: 1999. ISBN 1-57322-751-X, p. 519.
- ^ Derek Malcolm. Akira Kurosawa: Throne of Blood. March 4, 1999. guardian.co.uk. November 19, 2008 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/1999/mar/04/derekmalcolmscenturyoffilm.derekmalcolm>
[edit] External links
- "Shakespeare Transposed" essay by Stephen Prince
- Program note from the 1957 San Francisco International Film Festival
- Throne of Blood at the Internet Movie Database
- Throne of Blood at Allmovie
- Throne of Blood (Japanese) at the Japanese Movie Database
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