Geeking over film.
Akira Kurosawa at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival.
Dodes’ka-den/どですかでん(Akira Kurosawa - 1970)
The film’s splendid color designs represent an entirely new aesthetic in his work. Kurosawa was a painter, and when he turned to color in film, he unleashed his painterly style on-screen. As in his painting, Kurosawa’s cinematic color designs are bold, aggressive, and decidedly counter to the kind of social realism that he often aimed for in his black-and-white films. In Dodes’ka-den, the landscape, the costuming, and the faces and hair of the characters are given a stylized chromaticism. […]
Kurosawa had long been interested in the way that dreams and fantasies can ease the burdens of life. In the film, Japan exists beyond this slum—a realm of affluence and material abundance—is equally distant, like a mirage floating beyond reach, impossible to grasp. The denizens of this colorful slum know it’s there, but they cannot walk its paths apart from their dreams. Kurosawa shows us the cast-off effluvium of modernism, an industrial wasteland, polluted, decaying, one that destroys the lives of those caught in it, and yet he also shows the persistence of the human spirit.
— Stephen Prince [x]
![Akira Kurosawa on Kenji Mizoguchi (May 16, 1898 – August 24, 1956)
“His greatness was that he never gave up trying to heighten the reality of each scene. He never made compromises. He never said that something or other ‘would do.’ Instead, he pulled—or pushed—everyone along with him until they had created the feeling which matched his own inner image. An ordinary director is quite incapable of this. And in this lay his true spirit as a director—for he had the temperament of a true creator. He pushed and bullied and he was often criticized for this but he held out, and he created masterpieces. This attitude toward creation is not at all easy, but a director like him is especially necessary in Japan where this kind of pushing is so resisted. […] In the death of Mizoguchi, Japanese film lost its truest creator.”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m43mupeD6w1qf7r5lo1_1280.jpg)
Akira Kurosawa on Kenji Mizoguchi (May 16, 1898 – August 24, 1956)
“His greatness was that he never gave up trying to heighten the reality of each scene. He never made compromises. He never said that something or other ‘would do.’ Instead, he pulled—or pushed—everyone along with him until they had created the feeling which matched his own inner image. An ordinary director is quite incapable of this. And in this lay his true spirit as a director—for he had the temperament of a true creator. He pushed and bullied and he was often criticized for this but he held out, and he created masterpieces. This attitude toward creation is not at all easy, but a director like him is especially necessary in Japan where this kind of pushing is so resisted. […] In the death of Mizoguchi, Japanese film lost its truest creator.”
Akira Kurosawa on the set of Kagemusha.
Satyajit Ray’s sketches of D.W. Griffith, Sergei Eisenstein, Akira Kurosawa, and Pablo Picasso. [x]
Machiko Kyō on the set of Rashōmon/羅生門 (Akira Kurosawa - 1950)
Andrei Tarkovsky’s ten favorite films:
- Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson)
- Winter Light (Ingmar Bergman)
- Nazarín (Luis Buñuel)
- Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman)
- City Lights (Charles Chaplin)
- Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi)
- Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa)
- Persona (Ingmar Bergman)
- Mouchette (Robert Bresson)
- Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara)
The beginning of Sanshiro Sugata (1943) and the end of Madadayo (1993).
“As if Japan weren’t small enough to begin with, I fail to understand why it is necessary to think of it in even smaller units. No matter where I go in the world, although I can’t speak any foreign language, I don’t feel out of place. I think of the earth as my home. If everyone thought this way, people might notice how foolish international friction is, and they would put an end to it. We are, after all, at a point where it is almost narrow-minded to think merely in geocentric terms. Human beings have launched satellites into outer space, and yet they still grovel on earth looking at their own feet like wild dogs. What is to become of our planet?”
- Akira Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa and Mikio Naruse. Kurosawa served as Naruse’s assistant director on Nadare (Avalanche, 1937).
One day on the set I had nothing to do, as usual. So I went behind a backdrop that had clouds painted on it and found a huge velvet curtain that was used for backgrounds in night scenes. It was conveniently folded, so I lay down on it and promptly went to sleep. The next thing I knew, one of the assistant lighting technicians was prodding me awake. “Run!” he said. “Naruse’s mad.” In a panic I fled through a ventilation hole in the back of the stage. As I scrambled, I heard the lighting assistant yell, “He’s behind the clouds!” When I came nonchalantly through the front entrance to the stage, Naruse was coming out. “What’s wrong?” I asked, and he replied, “Somebody’s snoring on my stage. My day’s ruined, so I’m going home.” To my great shame, I was unable to admit that I had been the culprit. In fact, I didn’t bring myself to tell Naruse the truth until ten years had passed. He thought it was very funny.
Akira Kurosawa: Something Like an Autobiography
