Rashomon
Akira Kurosawa · 1950
Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film gathers a woodcutter, a priest and a passer-by under the ruined Rashomon gate during a rainstorm as the first two recount a trial testimony about a samurai's death in a forest, told in turn by a captured bandit, the samurai's wife, the dead man himself through a medium, and finally the woodcutter who found the body. Shot by Kazuo Miyagawa, who pointed a camera directly into sunlight through forest canopy for the first time in Japanese studio film, and made for around $140,000, it won the Golden Lion at Venice and an honorary Academy Award, introducing much of the West to Japanese cinema in the process.