MoFo Battle Royale Directors Edition, Round 4: Akira Kurosawa vs. Martin Scorsese

Akira Kurosawa


vs.

Martin Scorsese

Okay this one is easy, Akira all the way.

Sorry Kurosawa, but I love Scorsese's movies too much not to vote for him.

Akira Kurosawa

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Marty. Barely.

Kurosawa

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"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."- Groucho Marx

Scorsese.

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"A laugh can be a very powerful thing. Why, sometimes in life, it's the only weapon we have."

Suspect's Reviews

I love Scorses in the only way a man can love another man .

But I have to vote for Akira Kurosawa the man was just a spectacularly good filmmaker a true genius and one of the only filmmakers who I would actually rank higher than Scorsese.

Just tied it up with my vote for Scorsese

I enjoy Marty's films more so put him in the lead

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Well if anyone was to beat Akira I'm glad it was Marty.

WTF, wow. Kurosawa is a legend whose CAREER IS OVER CUZ HES DEAD. What a weird pairing. Obviously Kurosawa.

I think if Scorsese's career ended right now, he will have made more significant films in the history of cinema than Kurosawa. I love Kurosawa, but Scorsese is my favorite director of all time. I'd said they're both equally influential--Kurosawa's films have been the basis of several movies now considered classics, Scorsese more or less corners the market on intense, violent character studies, and everyone from Guy Ritchie to Quentin Tarantino has borrowed from his style and techniques.

I will say that just about every Kurosawa film I've seen is exceptional, but I guess I just relate more to Scorsese's small, personal stories than Kurosawa's classic story adaptations.

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"I want a film I watch to express either the joy of making cinema or the anguish of making cinema" -Francois Truffaut

Definitely I connect with Scorsese more. His films are in English for one. His characters aren't all (not that Kurosawa totally is) ultra-cool samurais and Shakespearian and Dostoyevskian analogs. But Kurosawa mades films about 19th century Japan in the 50s and he doesn't seem dated at all. Seven Samurai I would pick over any Scorsese film, if I had to. And not just out of namesake and reputation. I don't need to make mental concessions with him like I do with Citizen Kane. Great art has the ability to redefine itself in every generation. Scorsese sort of hasn't had time to do this. Currently, his films are extremely well-done, but they're reduced to these within-the-lines type of genre flicks. Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, and Goodfellas are his greatest films, no? To me, these kinds of people are harder to relate to than the Japanese.