For an artist, what could be worse than having your film cut down by governmental restrictions? Apparently for Kurosawa, it was being hired by that same government to make a wartime propaganda film. The result is the Most Beautiful, a film which is frankly anything but.
Let's be clear from the start, I don't blame Kurosawa for any of this. We all do what we have to in order to survive, and it seems entirely likely that without the sacrifices in these early pictures, his career would not have survived long enough to make his later masterpieces. But this film is bad.
The main problem is that in creating a propaganda film, the main purpose is not one of artistry,…