Three different posters from three different countries all depict unique views

of how "Rashomon" should be portrayed. The original Japanese poster focuses

on the strong emotional content, a Czech poster reflects the psychological
themes of the film through symbolic imagery, and a U.S. poster attempts to
ensure its audience that the film is important and entertaining despite its
foreignness. All the posters look completely different from on another as a result
of the distinctive motives of the respective advertisers.

The first is the original Japanese poster, which shows the three people
involved in the rape murder: the bandit, the man and the woman, who are all
shown in equal proportions. It is a chaotic composition: the characters'
expressions reflect madness, anger and fear. From the poster it is hard to tell
what the film is about(italicize), but it does give off the impression that it will
involve intense emotions, based on the facial expressions and mannerisms, as
well as a lack of a distinct protagonist, based on the equal proportions given to
the characters.

The second poster is the U.S. poster released in late 1951. This one shows three
screenshots from the film all of which involve a man and a woman: one with
Toshiro pulling the woman backward, one with him standing heroically with the
woman behind him and one with the woman with her head on her husbands
shoulder. There is also small graphic image of the woman peering out deviously
from behind someones back which rounds off the romantic, deviant and
ultimately exotic feeling of the images. While the images in the poster are
romantic depictions of foreign drama the quotations seem to be attempts to
justify the merit of the film despite its alieness. The U.S. poster relies on the
international success and praise of Rashomon and on giving off the impression
that it is exotic or "new experience in the cinema".

The last poster is from the Czech Republic: it is visually minimalistic but
stays true to the themes of the film. It consists of the framing of a plain border
broken in the left corner by a large drop of blood, a mouth looking as though it is
anout to speak in the lower middle, and the building where the characters
discuss the different stories (the name of the building is where the movie's title
comes from) grounded very small at the bottom. The emphasis given to the
mouth reflects the importance of storytelling in the film, and the fact that it is the
focal point over top of the building where the storytelling takes places sticks with
the message of the film that words have a great influence over the truth. The way
the drop of blood which fractures the framing of the poster implies that there will
be violent and disturbing content in the film.

The Japanese and Czech posters both keep most with the themes of
Rashomon, but in very different ways. The U.S. poster relies on the international
success of the film, which is to be expected because, as this was the first
Japanese film which received wide release in North America for fourteen years,
its success in the U.S. was a gamble and therefore the poster should have as
much supportive quotations as possible rather than symbolic imagery pertaining
to the underlying meaning of the film. There is no one best poster, though the
U.S. one is the we