A complete list of Akira Kurosawa’s 33 favourite American movies
Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa exerted a significant influence on cinema during his tenure as a filmmaker, finding significant acclaim with movies like Rashomon and Seven Samurai. Poetic and simply masterful, Kurosawa’s approach to cinema has made him one of the most acclaimed figures in the history of the medium, but he might not have become such a prominent influence without the impact of the movies that shaped his taste.
Kurosawa consumed a wide array of genres from all over the world. While he naturally drew a lot from his native Japan, the filmmaker also cited certain American filmmakers as huge sources of inspiration. In particular, he was impressed by the Western genre, which influenced his unique and groundbreaking approach to making samurai films.
The director was a big fan of John Ford and was inspired by his championing of the anti-hero within his distinctly American works. “John Ford is really great. When I’m old, that’s the kind of director I want to be,” Kurosawa reportedly told Teruyo Nogami in reference to the American western legend. But what is his favourite movie by Ford? In the book Yume wa tensai de aru (A Dream is a Genius), published following Kurosawa’s death, a comprehensive list of his favourite movies was revealed, which identified My Darling Clementine as his most coveted Ford title.
Kurosawa also had an affinity for several silent films, like Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl by the controversial director D.W. Griffith. Released in 1919, the film was the first to be distributed by United Artists and was highly acclaimed for its exploration of intense topics, such as child abuse.
It seemed that Kurosawa was a fan of many different movements in American cinema history, citing several classics from the Golden Age of Hollywood, like It’s A Wonderful Life and The Big Sleep, as well as some 1960s must-sees, like What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Bonnie and Clyde, and The Birds. As the New Hollywood era kicked into gear, he found himself enamoured by popular titles like The Godfather Part II and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, as well as more comedic picks like Annie Hall.
It appeared that Kurosawa enjoyed an epic movie like Ben-Hur as much as he loved a low-budget indie movie, such as Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise. With a deep love for cinema, the filmmaker watched a range of genres, from westerns and horror movies to period dramas and comedies, highlighting Kurosawa’s keen desire to consume a wide variety of films, which subsequently influenced his own work.
Akira Kurosawa’s favourite American movies:
- Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (D.W Griffith, 1919)
- The Gold Rush (Charlie, Chaplin, 1925)
- Morocco (Josef von Sternberg, 1930)
- The Thin Man (W. S. Van Dyke, 1934)
- Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937)
- My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946)
- It’s a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946)
- The Big Sleep (Howard Hawks, 1946)
- Daddy Long Legs (Jean Negulesco, 1955)
- The Proud Ones (Robert D. Webb, 1956)
- The Young Lions (Edward Dmytryk, 1957)
- Ben-Hur (William Wyler, 1959)
- What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962)
- The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock, 1963)
- Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Mike Nichols, 1966)
- Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967)
- In the Heat of the Night (Norman Jewison, 1967)
- Midnight Cowboy (John Schlesinger, 1969)
- M*A*S*H (Robert Altman, 1970)
- Johnny Got His Gun (Dalton Trumbo, 1971)
- The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971)
- The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Milos Forman, 1975)
- Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975)
- Annie Hall (Woody Allen, 1977)
- Gloria (John Cassavetes, 1980)
- The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1983)
- Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch, 1984)
- Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984)
- The Trip to Bountiful (Peter Masterson, 1985)
- The Dead (John Huston, 1987)
- The Whales of August (Lindsay Anderson, 1987)
- Running on Empty (Sidney Lumet, 1988)
