Between IFC and TCM I have seen two Kurasawa movies this week. He was a famous Japanese film-maker, and these movies are shown with English sub-titles.
"Rashomon" starts off in a ruined pagoda where three travelers have stopped seeking refuge from pouring rain. They are talking about a case where a wealthy woman and her husband were traveling along a path in the mountains and were accosted by a bandit.

The bandit ties the husband up to a stump, then rapes the wife. The wife crawls over to her husband after the attack and he stares coldly at her. She is ruined for him. She should commit suicide to save face. Her version of the event are told to a court--she said that after her husband rejected her, she didn't know what happened, but when she came to her senses, a dagger was sticking out of his chest.

The court hears different versions of the event. A hidden onlooker says the bandit told the wife to come with him; he loved her. The wife taunts her husband and tells the bandit to kill him. The bandit cuts the husband loose and they fight with swords. The husband winds up dead, and the wife runs away, escaping the bandit.

The rain stops, and the men hear a baby wailing in the back of the ruins. They find a baby in swaddling clothes. One of the men steal the baby's kimono; another man picks up the baby and holds him as they talk about what to do with it. The poorest of the three men, dressed in rags and barefoot, takes the baby, saying "I have five children already, I'll take it."

(There must be a connection to the rape and the bandit and the abandoned child, but I haven't figured that out yet.)

susil