Style of “the Pictorial Shakespeare”—— Auteur Theory Applying to Akira Kurosawa’s Work

Abstract

By investigating the cinematography and thematic concerns of Akira Kurosawa’s work under the auteurist criteria, it can be argued that Kurosawa is an auteur whose work possesses three distinctive authorial signatures: the active involvement of nature, the strong sense of stage-performance, the editing on movement; and the consistent visual style has corresponding meaning concerning his personal experience and socio-historical circumstances.