n his memoir, , Sidney Lumet, the director of , tells a lovely story about a conversation with the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. Why had he chosen to frame a shot in his film in a particular way? Kurosawa replied that if he’d panned the camera one inch to the left, the Sony factory was visible, and if he’d panned an inch to the right, we would see the airport — neither of which belonged in a period movie. Lumet also called Kurosawa “the Beethoven of movie directors” — maximalist, effervescent and exacting. A visionary bridge-builder between western and Japanese cultures, Kurosawa’s films have been revered by directors as varied and eminent as Bergman, Fellini, Kubrick, Scorsese, George Lucas and Wes Anderson. His obituary hailed
