Akira Kurosawa, one of the cinema’s greatest auteurs, has wowed audiences worldwide and inspired filmmakers as diverse as George Lucas and Sergio Leone. This essential 5-disc box set brings together five of his most profound masterpieces exploring the complexities of life, including 2 DVD debuts.
Included is the beautifully nuanced Ikiru (1952) in which Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura plays a dying man who discovers a new zest for life in the last six months of his life as he tries to turn a waste dump into a children’s playground; the nuclear threat drama I Live in Fear (1949); the humane Red Beard (1965), in which Toshiro Mifune plays an authoritarian doctor who has to teach an idle new intern responsibility to oneself and others; and, making their DVD debuts, the acclaimed Gorky adaptation The Lower Depths (1957) and Kurosawa’s acclaimed first colour film Dodes’ Ka-den (1970).
