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Rashomon (羅生門) is a Japanese motion picture made in 1950 by director Akira Kurosawa. It is one of Kurosawa's masterpieces, starring Toshiro Mifune. Based on two stories by Akutagawa Ryunosuke (Rashomon and In a Grove) it describes a crime (a rape and a murder) through the widely differing accounts of four witnesses, including the perpetrator. Rashomon was one of three films on which Kurosawa collaborated with master cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa.
The story unfolds in flashback as four characters—the bandit Tajomaru (Mifune), the samurai Takehiro (Mayasuki Mori), his wife Masako (Machiko Kyo), and the nameless woodcutter (Takashi Shimura)—recount the events of one afternoon in a grove. Each story is self-serving, and all are mutually contradictory, leaving the viewer unable to determine the truth of the events.
The film's concept has been highly influential on many other subsequent works. In English and other languages, "Rashomon" has become a by-word for any situation wherein the truth of an event becomes difficult to verify due to the conflicting accounts of different witnesses.
Winner of the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival, the film is widely credited to have introduced both Kurosawa and Japanese cinema to Western audiences.
The 1964 western movie The Outrage, was a remake of Rashomon. It starred Paul Newman, Claire Bloom and Edward G. Robinson.
See also: Rashomon
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