Favorite shot in a kurosawa film

Kurosawa's use of sounds and music is wonderful indeed. Equally striking in Red Beard is the fraction of a second when the doctors hear the women calling the child in the well. The scene of High and Low you allude to (even if I do not connect it with any sound or music) is a terrible description of fear (not unsimilar, if heavier, is the young doctor's reaction to death rattle in Red Beard). My personal favorite, though, are related with Stray Dog. The young policeman at the older policeman's house, both talking about the "apres guerre", the frogs croaking, a ghostly figure crossing in the distance, and the children sleeping - that is a perfect scene. Stray Dog is for me full of these fragile, tense (sometimes funny) epiphanies ; and the semi-documentary wandering of young Murakami in postwar Tokyo, that some people find so taxing, is one of them.

It's so difficult to pick one favorite shot/scene of Kurosawa's films. The wind chimes shot as Sahachi meets his wife you describe is agmonst my favorite. When I saw that shot for the first time I had to rewind for another viewing. Other favorite shots of mine were in Rashomon. Of course the ending shot as Takashi Shimura leaves holding the baby and the women's tale before she kills him. The camera rotates to the man with that haunting stare in his eyes.

My favourite scenes are the endings to 'Yojimbo' and 'Sanjuro', when after the story has been told, the super samurai ronin turns his back to those that are left, gives his 'trademark' shrug, his musical motif kicks in and the screen dissolves to black. Truly amazing, these endings always make me want to watch these two movies again. I agree with the above scenes also, but in Red Beard my favourite is when Sahachi first meets his wife, she comes out to him with an Umbrella, he says he is wet already, and they stand together in the falling snow. God Bless Akira Kurosawa, and i'm an atheist!

The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.

Ikiru - Shimura on the swing, singing that beautiful song to himself in the snow as he's about to die. I could watch that over and over all day long. I nearly had tears in my eyes. Perhaps THE most beautiful shjot I've seen in ANY film.

Seven Samurai - The fast cut of the SIX Samurai's (Mifune was the one who sounded the false alarm). Also the slow motion bits and of course the final battle

Ran - The end with the blind man/boy walking towards the edge of the cliff. Need no words and yet it sums up the whole film. Also the one with the Father in the castle with fire and arrows flying around him and he's just sitting there



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"There is a Light That Never Goes Out..."

Very end scene of Ran ios one of my favourite.

This movie had loads of scenes that inscribed themselves in my memory. In no particular order, here are my favorites:
--The scene with the mantis, especially the beginning when Kurosawa does an immaculate job of showing first apprehension, then curiosity, then acceptance, then passion, then fear, then struggle, all through framing, cinematography, and positioning of the characters. I loved how the entire sequence was framed and shot.
--The shot when the doctors are trying to feel the girl's forehead while she is scrubbing the floor.
--The windchime shot and subsequent impaling. That was sequence was also masterfully conceived.
--Also, the scene when Akahige and Yasumoto are returning to the clinic with Yasumoto carrying the girl on his back contrasts nicely with the opening scene when Yasumoto approaches the clinic.

These scenes rival my other favorites in Yojimbo and Ikiru (the swing scene and the happy birthday scene). Extremely well done. Truly, this movie is a study in excellence in filmmaking.

A brief aside--IMHO, this movie is exactly WHY movies are made. The way this movie is filmed adds such incredible depth to the stories and characters in a few seconds that would take pages to cover in a book. Don't get me wrong, I love reading, but this movie is an advocate for the need for cinema, if ever there was one.

Shot vs. Scene. If you mean the section of the film that had the greatest emotional impact the scene with the wind chimes, or the women calling into the well.

If you mean a moment of camerawork: In the story within a story: the shot of the woman coming out of the earthquake, the smoke of the fires behind her face, alternating between glimpses of the image of her face and glaring sun light blaring into the camera, wiping out the screen in an oblivion of whiteness. The camera lets you SEE her emotion, madness and self-obliteration.

Just the best.

I think the last shot in Ran is probably the most powerful when watching the whole film. But the last shot in High and Low (SPOILER), when a fairly long section of the kidnapper's speech plays out, he's dragged off, and the gate slams down, is just AWESOME.

Great shots in Red Beard: after the earthquake, when the dying man's wife is walking around and the smoke is moving past the sun, mostly blotting it out but sometimes letting it shine through and blast out the entire frame... pretty haunting.
The shot that moves down into the well, when you see the reflections below, as if they're ghosts at the bottom is also really neat. I was trying to figure out how he got the shot when the ripple shows that the camera is only inches from the water.