Monday, April 17 - Tuesday, April 18:: Read the scenario; we will discuss. You might want to also look at Kurosawa’s own "autobiographical statement" 114-22, and the two stories that were the basis for the scenario, pps. 97-109. There are a number of critical reviews of the film in the back of the book that are interesting to read – after seeing the film and reading the scenario.

Wednesday, April 19: We will view the film in Large Group, and continue on Thursday, probably.

Thursday, April 20: We will discuss what we saw;

Monday, April 24 and Tuesday, April 25: We will continue discussion.  In small Group, you'll be asked to write about Rashomon.

"I also believe that every film must contain some degree of 'planned violence' upon its audience. In a good film, people must be made to see something that they don't want to see; they must be made to approve of someone of whom they had disapproved, they must be forced to look where they had refused to look." - French film director Francois Truffaut

"When. . .we read a novel, or see on the stage or screen a happening, we inevitably feel - if only because we are asked to give the event an hour or more of our attention - that it is offered to us as noteworthy, an example not of what happened (it didn't happen, it's fictional) but an example of what happens. The characters in the fictional work are (like the characters in newspaper items) individuals, not mere abstractions, but (unlike those in newspaper items) they are significant individuals, in some measure revealing to us a whole class of people or way of life." - Editors, Introduction to Literature (8th edition, Little, Brown)