By Madhup. Chandigarh: After training as a painter, Kurosawa entered the film industry in 1936 as an assistant director, making his directorial debut in 1943. After working in a wide range of genres, he made his breakthrough film Rashomon in 1950. It won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival, and first revealed the richness of Japanese cinema to the West.
Kurosawa’s films have always been more popular in the West than in his native Japan, where critics have viewed his adaptations of Western genres and authors (William Shakespeare, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Maxim Gorky and Evan Hunter) with suspicion – but he’s revered by American and European film-makers, who remade Shichinin no samurai (1954), as The Magnificent Seven (1960), Yojimbo (1961), as Per un pugno di dollari (1964) and Kakushi-toride no san-akunin (1958), as Star Wars (1977).
World Cinema has released a 4 DVD Pack of legendary Japanese Film Maker,
Akira Kurosawa’s Finest Films on Shemaroo. This Collectors Pack includes four films – Rashomon, Ran, Madadayo and The Quiet Duel that includes synopsis and the film maker’s Profile, along with certain Trivia on him.