Movie Appreciation: Rashomon

Watched Kurosawa's Rashomon for the first time a few nights ago. A fascinating and cool movie in many ways. The music is by Fumio Hayasaka. Sarah suggested that it was very Tchaikovsky, and it reminded me a lot of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf- interesting to remember how close Russia is to Japan. It's orchestral fantasy music with tons of featured woodwinds- much closer to "classical music" than fantasy music is these days. He must have written a solid 30 minutes of music, too, with very little repetition. Clearly recorded in the 50's- lots of bassoons squawking like shawms.