Summertime can be difficult for movie-lovers. For a while they can stand those summer movies that show teams of childish men blowing things up or show foolish young men learning not to treat women like objects unless the women want them to, or the stories that show random children fighting against centuries-old sorcerers who want to destroy the world for no apparent reason.

But after six or eight of those re-treads (and now combinations of them!), a St. Louisan can always turn to the Webster University Film series, where classics, originals and experiments are always available.

Akira Kurosawa

Photo taken in the '50s

For the entire month of July, the Webster series is screening 17 movies from the career of Akira Kurosawa, in honor of the 100th anniversary of his birth. With 12 movies still to show, the series can keep you busy even if you've been on vacation since before the Fourth of July.

Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) was the legendary director of 30 movies, including a half-dozen international classics such as "Seven Samurai," "Rashomon," "Yojimbo" and "Kagemusha." The list of Kurosawa's admirers and imitators is simply astounding and includes Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Werner Herzog and many more.

Bergman said his own classic "The Virgin Spring" was a bad copy of Kurosawa. Sergio Leone notoriously made his spaghetti western, "A Fistful of Dollars," by basically changing the names and locations from "Yojimbo," and George Lucas openly acknowledges Kurosawa's "The Hidden Fortress" (1957) as the source of the Star Wars saga.

"The Seven Samurai" (at Webster: 7:30 p.m. July 16) has been called the greatest Japanese film ever made, and after being re-made as "The Magnificent Seven," it became the source of renewed American interest in "adult Westerns" after World War II. Kurosawa's stunning "Rashomon" was the influential first example of a major movie presenting stories told from multiple but questionable points of view that are now so familiar to movie audiences. Quite possibly, considering the numbers of movie-goers over readers, the "Rashomon effect" has done more to popularize the multiple-layered narrative than the novels of James Joyce and William Faulkner combined.

Many of Kurosawa's good movies are rarely seen on theater screens and all the Webster movies are on new 35 mm prints, some recently restored. Any one little-seen Kurosawa movie, say "High and Low" or "Red Beard," can offer a viewer more "story" -- and more original stories -- than in a half-dozen summer Hollywood knockoffs.

"High and Low" (1963) (at Webster: 7:30 p.m. July 25) is about a rich industrialist (played by Toshiro Mifune) whose son is kidnapped, based on an Ed McBain mystery novel. "Red Beard" (1965) (at Webster: 7:30 p.m. July 26) is about a medical clinic in Shogunate Japan in which the idiosyncratic director of the clinic shows a young doctor how to be a serious man and not just a society boy. The clinic director, nicknamed "Red Beard" (Toshiro Mifune again), is a bit like one of the "red-haired" European foreigners recently arrived in Japan with strange new ideas. But he's also old-school. Imagine a John Wayne drill sergeant from an old war movie combined with the doctor on "House."

Like John Wayne with director John Ford and Robert DeNiro with director Martin Scorsese, Chinese-born actor Toshiro Mifune became the virtual alter ego of director Akira Kurosawa, starring in 16 of his movies, many of them now considered classics.

Though eventually estranged for decades, Kurosawa said, "All the films that I made with Mifune, without him, they would not exist." For his part, Mifune (right in "Rashomon"), who starred in more than 160 movies, speaking of Kurosawa, said, "I am proud of nothing I have done other than with him."

If you care to study one single effect in the hands of a master, watch how Kurosawa consistently uses the weather as a near-character, probably better than any other major director in the history of movies.

On the other hand, if you just want to see some great Kurosawa standards, you can still view "Ikiru" (1951), "The Seven Samurai" (1954), "Throne of Blood" (1957), "Yojimbo" (1961), "Sanjuro" and "Kagemusha" (1980), all coming in the next three weeks.

if you want to go

All the movies are shown at 7:30 p.m  on Thursday through Monday nights and the ticket prices are half the usual cost at most theaters. The location is Moore Auditorium in the central entrance to Webster Hall, the main building on 470 E. Lockwood in Webster Groves. The complete schedule for all summer movies in the series can be found at www.webster.edu/filmseries .

To see Nick's individual commentaries on "Rashomon" and "Seven Samurai" from Sept. 8, 2008, on Nick's List, click here .