Rashomon Essay

Kazuo Miyagawa, well famous for his tracking shots in the 1950 film Rashomon is one of the leading figures in Japanese cinematography. He was born in Kyoto, Japan on the 25th February of 1908. Kazuo began studying film in the 1920s and was intrigued by the high-contrast lightings German films during that period of time. In 1926, he graduated from the Kyoto Commercial School and joined one of Japan’s major film production companies, Nikkatsu Corp. Miyagawa started off his first film as a director of photography in the 1938 propaganda film, A Great Power Rising but at that time his artistic sense was not yet recognized and discovered by the senior filmmakers. However, in the 1950s when he started working on the Mizoguchi and Kurosawa films,
He contributed multiple ideas, technical skills and support which would eventually be an experimental and influential approach to cinematography. In one scene, there were a series of consistent single close-ups of the bandit character, the wife and the husband on repeat to emphasize their triangular relationship with each other. The film Rashomon also had camera shots directly facing the sunlight. This was because of the lack of natural light. They also used mirrors to reflect light when they were shooting in the woods. This would cause the sunlight to reflect and make the sunlight look as if it had traveled through the branches hitting the actors. Eventually, Rashomon was nominated and also won several awards a few of them being the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1951 and at the 24th Academy Awards in 1952, the Academy Honorary Award. Rashomon is now considered one of the greatest films ever
While working with him, Miyagawa had to avoid frequently setting up cameras and his intrusive close-ups. He was the DOP for a few of Mizoguchi’s masterpieces which includes Ugestsu Monogatari (1953). In the film, to create a supernatural feel, he demonstrated it by taking shots of a trip across the lake as a boat emerges from the lingering mist. He also took long shots in Sansho, The Bailiff (1954) to create an elegiac feudal Japan mood for a story that tells about a suffering family at that time. He also worked very closely with Mizoguchi on the film New Tales of the Taira Clan in 1955. It was Mizoguchi’s first color film. He also worked on Mizoguchi’s last film as DOP again, Street of Shame