[In 1952 Kurosawa] made one of his finest films, Living (Ikiru)—known as Doomed in America—which the Quarterly of Film, Radio, and Television has called "one of the greatest films of our time." In it Kurosawa explored almost every potentiality of the film medium in illustrating his relatively simple story…. In this film Kurosawa's humanism was at its height. This discursive film is long and varied; it winds and unwinds; it shifts from mood to mood, from present to past, from silence to a deafening roar—and all in the most unabashed and absorbing fashion. Its greatest success may be in its revitalization of film technique. It, together with Kinoshita's A Japanese Tragedy (Nihon no Higeki) and Carmen's Pure Love (Karumen Junjosu), shows that when it wants to, Japanese film technique can be among the most dynamic in the world. The film's fault is perhaps that Kurosawa's genius...