Throne of Blood

Throne of Blood
File:Throne of Blood poster.jpg Original Japanese poster
Directed by	Akira Kurosawa
Written by	Shinobu Hashimoto Ryuzo Kikushima Akira Kurosawa Hideo Oguni William Shakespeare (play)
Produced by	Sojiro Motoki Akira Kurosawa
Starring	Toshirō Mifune Isuzu Yamada Takashi Shimura
Music by	Masaru Sato
Distributed by	Toho
Release date	January 15, 1957
Running time	105 min.
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese

Throne of Blood (蜘蛛巣城, Kumonosu-jō, literally "Spider Web Castle") is a 1957 film directed by Akira Kurosawa, which transposes the plot of William Shakespeare's play Macbeth to medieval Japan. It is regarded as one of Kurosawa's best films, and by many critics as one of the best film adaptations of Macbeth, despite having almost none of the play's script.

Plot

Kurosawa follows the events of Macbeth, although Kurosawa’s Washizu Taketori (played by Toshirō Mifune) is arguably less evil than Macbeth. As with the play, the main character's comrade (General Miki, played by Minoru Chiaki) is killed when he is perceived as a threat to the throne, only to return as a ghost. There is no Macduff character in this picture; hence Washizu does not meet his end in a duel. Instead, in a spectacular scene he is shot by his own archers and stumbles forward like a porcupine before being shot in the neck. He slowly descends the stairs and dies, collapsing dramatically on the fog-soaked ground.

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.

Washizu's famous death scene, in which his own archers turn upon him and fill his body with arrows, was in fact performed with real arrows, a choice made to help Mifune produce realistic facial expressions of fear. The arrows seen to impact the wooden walls were not superimposed or faked by special effects (this is disputed, however, as cables are visible several times during the sequence and reverse motion photography was probably used), but instead shot by choreographed archers. During filming, Mifune waved his arms, ostensibly because his character was trying to brush away the arrows embedded in the planks; this indicated to the archers the direction in which Mifune wanted to move.

File:Throne of blood.jpg

Isuzu Yamada and Toshirō Mifune in Throne of Blood

Reception

The American literary critic Harold Bloom judged it "the most successful film version of Macbeth, though it departs very far from the specifics of the play."

External links

• "Shakespeare Transposed" essay by Stephen Price
• Program note from the 1957 San Francisco International Film Festival
• Throne of Blood at IMDb
• Throne of Blood Template:Ja icon at the Japanese Movie Database