Japn 340 Rashomon: "Into the Forest"

See an interesting discussion of the remarkable sequence of the Woodcutter walking through the forest in Rashomon:

"In ten of the twelve shots in which he appears, the Woodcutter moves in a single screen direction: in 2, 4, 5, and 9 he moves left-to-right; in 13 and 15 he moves right-to-left; in 3 and 16 he moves toward the camera; and in 8 and 14 he moves away from the camera. In the more-complicated 11, he moves first left-to-right and then right-to-left; and in 6 he moves first left-to-right, then toward the camera, and finally away from the camera. In sum, the Woodcutter moves left-to-right in six shots, right-to-left in three shots, toward the camera in three shots, and away from the camera in three shots. Although the Woodcutter’s toward-away movements are scattered throughout the sequence, his left-right movements are precisely divided by 11, which shows the change of direction. Before 11, the Woodcutter walks only to the right; after 11, only to the left."

Please see the website at: https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/into-the-woods-a-rashomon-sequence-analysis

Also, racall what Prince notes about this sequence which he refers to as an example of Kurosawa's penchant for "pure visualization":

Perhaps the most striking is the sequence the woodcutter’s walking through the forest before he finds evidence of the crime.  The sequence is composed of fifteen shots, all of which are tracking shots, so it becomes an extended essay on the capabilities of the moving camera.  Kurosawa intercuts low-angle tracking shots of the trees, through the sun sporadically peeps, high-angle tracking shots of the woodcutter moving through the forest, and extreme close-ups of the character with the camera following from both the front and the rear.  These are among the most sensuous moving camera shots in cinema history, and the entire sequence has a hypnotic power.  Much of this effect is due to the "silence," to the absence of dialogue and ambient sound.  Fumio Hayakawa’s percussive, rhythmic score is the only accompaniment to the images....Kurosawa, in fact, intended Rashomon to be a kind of silent film.  He attenpted to recover the aesthetic of the early cinema,which he so much admired, and to fashion this film accordingly. [As he niotes in his memoirs,] "I like silent films and always have. They are often so much more beautiful than sound pictures are. Perhaps they have to be. At any rate, I wanted to restore some of this beauty. I thought of it, I remember, this way: one of the techniques of modern painting is simplification; I must, therefore, simplify this film." (132)