Throne of Blood
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Throne of Blood (1957), original title Kumonosu-jō (蜘蛛巣城, "Spider Web Castle"), is a film by Akira Kurosawa, which transposes the plot of William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth to medieval Japan, shot in black and white and is arguably one of the finest of its time.
Plot
Kurosawa follows the events of Macbeth fairly closely, although Kurosawa’s Washizu Taketori (played by Toshiro Mifune) is arguably less evil than Macbeth, while his wife Asaji (played by Isuzu Yamada) is even nastier than Lady Macbeth. They both get their comeuppance in the end. Washizu gets his in a spectacular scene where he is shot by his own archers and stumbles forward like a porcupine before being shot in the neck. He slowly comes down the stairs, and ends up in a dramatic death in front of the camera.The film creates a phantasmal world between the witch that gives Washizu what he wants and the lunar landscape of his heart and his home.
Production
Kurosawa was an admirer of Noh drama, and acknowledged the stylistic influence it had on Throne of Blood. This influence can be seen in many aspects of the film, from the staging, to the characterizations, to the editing and direction.The famous arrow scene near the end was in fact done with real arrows. That is, the arrows hitting the wooden planks were not done with special effects, but rather choreographed with archers. Mifune waves his arms to brush away the arrows sticking from the planks, indicating to them that he wanted to go in that particular direction. The real arrows were included to get Mifune's facial expressions of real-life fear, which is exceptionally hard to imitate. Of course, the arrows that hit the Mifune character were bamboo fakes. Also, if you look closely at the arrow protruding from his neck and play those few seconds frame-by-frame, you see the flying arrow travel behind his neck and the false arrow's U-shaped loop can be seen in the collars of his armour. This was achieved with a sudden match cut.
External links
- [Stephen Prince essay at criterionco.com]
- [Differences between Kurosawa's Throne of Blood and Shakespeare's Macbeth]
{| style="margin:0 auto;" align=center width=75% class="toccolours" |align=center| Films by Akira Kurosawa |- |align=center| Sanshiro Sugata (1943) | The One Most Beautiful (1944) | Sanshiro Sugata Part II (1945) | They Who Step on the Tiger's Tail (1945) | Those Who Make Tomorrow (1946) | No Regrets for Our Youth (1946) | One Wonderful Sunday (1947) | Drunken Angel (1948) | The Quiet Duel (1949) | Stray Dog (1949) | Scandal (1950) | Rashomon (1950) | The Idiot (1951) | Ikiru (1952) | The Seven Samurai (1954) | I Live in Fear (1955) | Throne of Blood (1957) | The Lower Depths (1957) | The Hidden Fortress (1958) | The Bad Sleep Well (1960) | Yojimbo (1961) | Sanjuro (1962) | High and Low (1963) | Red Beard (1965) | Dodesukaden (1970) | Dersu Uzala (1975) | Kagemusha (1980) | Ran (1985) | Dreams (1990) | Rhapsody in August (1991) | Madadayo (1993)
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