Top 46 Kurosawa Quotes & Sayings

Most directors have one masterpiece by which they are known. Kurosawa has at least eight or nine.

I am inspired by both Japanese Samurai films, in particular the films of Kurosawa, and how they share the spirit of American Westerns, with the influences running in both directions, and including the 'Spaghetti Westerns' and films of Sam Peckinpah.

I admire Akira Kurosawa. I have a deep admiration for him and I would love to make films like that.

The great Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa said that to be an artist means never to avert your eyes. And that's the hardest thing, because we want to flinch. The artist must go into the white hot center of himself, and our impulse when we get there is to look away and avert our eyes.

When I met Akira Kurosawa in Japan, one question he asked me was, "How did you actually make the children act the way they do? I do have children in my films but I find that I reduce and reduce their presence until I have to get rid of them because there's no way that I can direct them." My own thought is that one is very grand, like an emperor on a horse, and it's very hard for a child to relate to that. In order to be able to cooperate with a child, you have to come down to below their level in order to communicate with them.

Akira Kurosawa, David Lean and Alfred Hitchcock were the main inspirations for 'Samurai Jack,' along with a lot of '70s cinema.

[Akiro] Kurosawa, no doubt, was a big influence. Movies sometimes more than directors have influenced me: The Grapes of Wrath, by John Ford, was an extraordinary discovery. Sergei Eisenstein, of course. Later on, [Ingmar] Bergman.

You see an absolutely brilliant film later, as an adult, and you walk out thinking about what to have for dinner. Whereas something like Jaws winds up having a huge effect on me. If only my parents had been taking me to Kurosawa films when I was eight, but no.

Shakespeare has been adapted by Akira Kurosawa. 'Dangerous Liaisons' has been adapted into a Chinese movie. 'Blood Simple', the Coen brothers movie, was adapted by Zhang Yimou.

Kurosawa was one of film's true greats. His ability to transform a vision into a powerful work of art is unparalleled.

The term 'giant' is used too often to describe artists. But in the case of Akira Kurosawa, we have one of the rare instances where the term fits.

Kurosawa is the sensei, the Shakespeare, of filmmaking.

The movies that made me want to make movies were action movies, and thrillers, and Kurosawa films, you know, where you have an opportunity every day to shoot it in an unusual way. I was looking for something like that.

In the neighborhood around Waseda, there were all these movie theaters, so every morning I left the house and watched movies instead of going to class. The experience of encountering films then is one of my greatest memories. Before that I'd never paid any attention to directors, but there I was taking a crash course in Ozu, Kurosawa, Naruse, Truffaut, Renoir, Fellini. Because I've always been naturally a more introspective person, I was more interested in becoming a screenwriter than a director.

There's this guy: his name, Sedik Ali. He's like the African Kurosawa. You know how Kurosawa does stuff from feudal Japan? This guy does the feudal system of Africa.

A lot of my stories are inspired by Japanese folklore or literature or movies: I've done stories based on Kabuki and Noh plays, and on Kurosawa's 'Yojimbo' movies.

You know the movie "Rashomon" from [Takeshi] Kurosawa, when all the people in the forest see something different? Each performance was like that.

The contemporary Japanese directors who are well-known in the West - say, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Takeshi Kitano, Naomi Kawase - are mostly unknown to Japanese, particularly of the younger generation.

I'm not Akira Kurosawa. He used to write...He used to write a completely new spec script over a couple of nights. I'm not like that. It takes me a long time to put a film together that I want to make.

If you want to make films, you'll watch Kurosawa. If you want to play a violin, you listen to Seghetti. Same with somebody who has the ambition to play in the NBA. I watch a basketball game; I enjoy it. Somebody who really wants to learn to play is studying whatever is most magnificent that's going on out there.

I was influenced by Ray Harryhausen and Lotte Reiniger, with her twitchy, cutout animation, which I happened to see at a very young age, but also by the Warner Bros. cartoons, 'Tom and Jerry,' and of course Disney. And also by Fellini's 'Giulietta of the Spirits' and Kurosawa's 'Ran.' And by other American illustrators and painters.

Fellini, Kurosawa, and Bunuel move in the same field as Tarkovsky. Antonioni was on his way, but expired, suffocated by his own tediousness.

I was influenced by European movies, old Fellini, old Kurosawa - any sort of foreign film.

Dolby stereo increases the possibility of emptiness in film sound at the same time that it enlarges the space that can be filled. It's this capacity for emptiness and not just fullness that offers possibilities yet to be explored. Kurosawa has magnificently exploited this dimension in Dreams: sometimes the sonic universe is reduced to a single point-the sound of the rain, an echo that disappears, a simple voice.

Akira Kurosawa is the pictorial William Shakespeare of our time.

Kurosawa is my hero, and I've taught courses on his films, and I love what he does, and 'Rashomon' is, I think, his second greatest film after 'Ikiru.'

I think Kurosawa was one of the first storytelling geniuses who began to change the narrative structure of films.

South Africa had very poor repertory distribution. I didn't find out about Akira Kurosawa and Tarkovsky and Werner Herzog until I got to the U.K.

I want to be able to make westerns like Akira Kurosawa makes westerns.

There's something very simple and contemplative about 'John Wick' - what is interesting is that it looks like it was based on an Akira Kurosawa movie.

The cinematic language and interior destiny of each Iranian film-maker is different. The international influences on them vary from Rossellini to Fellini, Akira Kurosawa to Hou Hsiao-hsien, but there is a strong sense of solidarity.

The expected vertical line of Ikiru's narrative breaks when Kurosawa does a flash-forward in the middle of the film.

Being a kid growing up with Kurosawa films and watching Sergio Leone movies just made me love what it could do to you, and how it could influence you - make you dream.

I'm a huge fan of Akira Kurosawa, a big Hitchcock fan.

In Kurosawa's films, the tragedy is that this strong man was crushed by corruption or mistrust at the end.

My love of visual sequences stems from live-action films like Sergio Leone westerns, Kurosawa, some '70s action films, Tex Avery, and my general love of animated movement.

For many years, my favorite director has been the Japanese giant Akira Kurosawa.

I've wanted to work with [Kairo aka Pulse director] Kiyoshi Kurosawa, but he has not been making horror movies recently.

Kurosawa was truly inventive.

I was in Japan, and my assistant director had worked with Kurosawa. I used quite of number of Kurosawa's crew.

I'm in the saddle every day playing a screwball. And then somebody comes along and says, "How would you like to go to Italy and Spain and do an Italian/Spanish/German co-production with an Italian director who's only directed one movie?" It wasn't like I was going there to be with Federico Fellini. But something was there, and I thought, Well, I loved this story when it was told by Akira Kurosawa; maybe this is a good idea. That's an instinctive moment. A Fistful of Dollars was made.

Even if I were to try to imitate Kurosawa I know that it's absolutely impossible. That era of film was just something else, including the actors. Everything about that era was on a completely different level.

I remember, the first time I saw a [Andrei] Tarkovsky film, I was shocked by it. I didn't know what to do. I was fascinated, because suddenly I realized that film could have so many more layers to it than what I had imagined before. Then others, like Kurosawa and Fellini, were like a new discovery for me, another country.

My favorite Tyler Perry movie? Ugh, how can you decide? For me, it's basically like: Kurosawa, Tyler Perry, Martin Scorsese, in that order.

I'm a huge lover of 'Seven Samurai' and anything Kurosawa ever did. The comedic work out of Japan in terms of martial arts movies, some of them are hilarious.

Now I want to make it plain that 'The Virgin Spring' must be regarded as an aberration. It's touristic, a lousy imitation of Kurosawa.