Kazuo Miyagawa - Master of Images, Moving and Still
Notable Films:
Rashomon (1950), Yojimbo (1961), Kagemusha (1980)
Kazuo Miyagawa (on the right, with director Mizoguchi)
Akira Kurosawa and his long-time cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa have together defined much of the aesthetic for which samurai films are known for.
In
Rashomon, the film opens in torrential rain, and five shots move from long shot to closeup to reveal two men sitting in the shelter of Kyoto's Rashomon Gate. And about eight minutes into the film, there is a sequence in which Miyagawa's camera follows the woodcutter with a slithery, fluid smoothness even on the uneven surfaces of the forest. This sequence is considered one of the greatest moving camera shots in the history of cinema.
Kurosawa notes in his autobiography that he had imagined
Rashomon as a silent film and tried to stay with that aesthetic, which is to tell the story through the visuals. Even though the film has a complex narrative it is easy to follow because of the way each scene is laid out.
Rashomon
Rashomon is the film that is often given credit for the first time a camera was pointed directly at the sun. In Kurosawa’s biography, he gives credit to his cinematographer for “inventing” it and himself for using it. Director Robert Altman even praises Kurosawa and Miyagawa's practice of pointing the camera directly at the sun, and admits to having copied the same trick for years.
Rashomon
Kurosawa creates the story of the film with mainly his camera, which he always considered a character as much as any of the actors. The film has no more than three locations—the shadowed woods where the crime is committed, the sun-lit court where the crime is investigated, and the rainy pavilion where it is recalled. The cinematography by Miyagawa effectively captures the mood of these different settings, which are all used as metaphors.
And some of the more elaborate shots in the film were created with shadow cheats, complicated dolly shots and a stolen wardrobe mirror (rather than a conventional foil reflector) to bounce adequate light in the dark forest, making it look like natural sunlight coming through. Miyagawa later called it the most successful lighting effect he had ever done.
Rashomon
"The cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa evokes the heat, light and shade of a semi-tropical forest.... Miyagawa shoots directly into the sun (then a taboo) and there are shots where the sharply-contrasted shadows of overhead leaves cast a web upon the characters, making them half-disappear into the ground beneath."
- Roger Ebert
For
Yojimbo, Miyagawa did an excellent job shooting this film by using several different techniques. One would be the use of deep focus. The use of the two dimensional space is also quite extensive in the film drawing us to two areas of the screen at the same time.
Yojimbo
Kurosawa uses low angles in the film to help out with the comedic nature of some of the scenes. One scene that stands out is the scene where Toshiro Mifune's character watches the rival families attempt to destroy each other once and for all. Mifune's character sits atop a bell tower and watches for his enjoyment the hijinks that he created. Miyagawa uses low camera angles on the ground for an added effect, while at the same time using a sort of dietic view as the samurai watches the action.
Yojimbo
Thanks to the work of Miyagawa, the film
Kagemusha displays an excellent use of colour, composition, scope and landscape, shot with striking detail. There is a breathtaking shot of a samurai army marching against a setting sun, and stunning shots of a courier clattering down countless steps, of men passing in front of a blood-red sunset, of a dying horse on a battlefield.
Kagemusha