Akira Kurosawa

TS Eliot considered this the finest film ever made, although several critics have attacked this loose adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth for the one-dimensionality of the characters. Whatever faults there may be in the dramatic structure, there's no denying the power of the atmosphere director Akira Kurosawa builds up through his majestic use of camera movement, while the eerie sets certainly justified the film's alternative title, Cobweb Castle. At the centre of these Noh tableaux stands Toshiro Mifune, as the villain who's so much at the mercy of fate and the elements that all you can feel at his death is pity.
(1957)
JP  B/W  104 mins