I would like to make the following modest proposal.
As Akira Kurosawa's centennial birthday will occur on March 23rd of this year, I propose that the biographic article on the filmmaker on Wikipedia.com be extensively revised so that it can be submitted to be upgraded to feature article status, and can thus be presented as the featured article on Wikipedia's home page on March 23rd, 2010. It is only right that one of the greatest directors who ever lived -- and the most famous Asian director who ever lived -- should be accorded this honor.
The current rating, according to Wikipedia's quality scale, of the Kurosawa article is, rather shockingly, "C-class," even though Kurosawa's biography as a topic has been rated of Top importance in the category of WikiProject Japan and of Core importance in the category of WikiProject Biography/Actors and Filmmakers. (It also appears in the WikiProject Screenwriters category.) Thus, the article would need to be upgraded pretty substantially in a hurry. I would like to consult with other Kurosawa experts (I definitely can't do this alone) about what needs to be done to bring this piece up to featured article status in two months.
I have reviewed the article and the following are some ways that I feel it can be improved:
- There is a complete lack of narrative flow in the description of Kurosawa's career as a whole that needs to be corrected.
His career, from most every reference work I've ever consulted and from my own viewing, falls into very sharply defined periods (e.g., the war years; the immediate postwar period; the "classic" years, including Rashomon, Ikiru, Yojimbo, etc.; and so on). But there is no sense of this structure at all in the article as it now exists. We read about his early career and his later career, but the middle (and most famous) period is not addressed at all. In the section about the later films, we read that he made films far less frequently, because they were more difficult to finance, but the article does not explain why this was the case. Just as importantly, there is no sense in the article of the context of Japanese film culture and of the movie industry as a whole in which A.K.'s achievement can make some kind of sense. His "Golden Age" -- 1950 through 1965 -- roughly corresponded with the so-called Golden Age of Japanese cinema, when domestic movies in general had a huge and loyal audience and esteemed directors -- Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi and others -- enjoyed unprecedented (but far from total) freedom to realize their creative visions. - The section "Directorial Approach" should be revised extensively.
This section should probably be renamed "Artistic Style" or "Artistic Technique." It makes some interesting points about the director's visual techniques, but it doesn't place them properly within his history. For example, it mentions, correctly, that he liked to use the editing technique of the screen "wipe" as a transitional device between scenes (this device appears from the very beginning of his career, in Sanshiro Sugata). Yet the section also indicates that he preferred to shoot scenes with telephoto lenses and multiple cameras, failing to mention that these methods only appeared in his work from Seven Samurai on. This is not a minor issue. Confusing such matters makes his artistic development less clear. The section also fails to mention the admiration which his Japanese colleagues felt for his skills as an editor. (They always referred to him as "The World's Greatest Editor.) Citations in general are very lacking in this section. - The section on "Influences" (which rather should read something like "Artistic Influences on Kurosawa") is not quite complete.
The nature and significance of the influence of the directors whom A.K. most admired (e.g., John Ford) is not communicated in the article. Some very important European influences, such as that of the French director Jean Renoir, go unmentioned. Finally, in the late 1990s, shortly before his death, he compiled a list consisting of 100 favorite films of his, in chronological order, with, however, a self-imposed limit of one film per director (presumably, he would have chosen more John Ford films other than My Darling Clementine, had he not thus limited himself). This list reflects the wide range of his cinematic interests and enthusiasms and is thus appropriate to this section. - The section titled "Influence" (which perhaps ought to be "Film Artists Who Were Influenced by Kurosawa) is rambling and undisciplined.
Films that are not officially credited as remakes of films by Kurosawa (except in the case of A Fistful of Dollars, which A.K. successfully sued to receive credit) ought to be deleted. The bulleted list of directors cited as being influenced by him is far too long, and the name of any director not including a usable quote about A.K. should be deleted. - The section titled "Collaboration" (which should perhaps be called "Collaborators") is fairly good, but flawed.
For example, it fails to mention the crucial qualities that these collaborators (such as the composer Fumio Hayasaska) added to his films, though A.K. himself in published statements was quite explicit about the importance of their contribution. - A new section should be created titled "Recurring Themes in Kurosawa's Films."
Some examples of such themes might be: "Master and Student," "Personal Responsibility," "The Fateful Meeting," "Clash of the Upper and Lower Classes" and "The Ego." Citations in books and on the web demonstrating these themes might take a little digging, but I believe they can be found. - There should be a new short section on the importance of the films that Kurosawa set in contemporary times -- e.g., Ikiru, Record of a Living Being -- as opposed to the samurai epics.
- A brief subsection on the supposedly "Western" quality of his film technique should be added.
- Finally, a short section entitled "Criticisms of Kurosawa" must be added for balance.
David Baldwin
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