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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, it describes a crime 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.
Because of the film's success, the word "Rashomon" has come to refer to
(in English and in other languages) a situation wherein the truth of an
event becomes difficult to verify due to the conflicting nature of different
witnesses.
The film has been remade, officially and unofficially, many times; in the
United States a
Western remake, credited to Kurosawa and named The Outrage, was
made in
1964 with
Paul Newman,
Claire Bloom and
Edward G. Robinson.
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