I am using this post on my blog as an area in which those who want to work on the Kurosawa Featured Article Project (see post A Birthday Present for Akira Kurosawa below) can collaborate, offering suggestions, content and revisions to create a Wikpedia page that will be chosen (hopefully during 2010, Kurosawa's centennial year) as a featured article on the site's home page.
Those who wish to participate should respond by posting a comment to this particular post. Please keep all comments constructive. What I and others might write may be controversial to some AK fans and scholars. Our ability to complete this project will depend on our resolving such differences civilly.
Vili Maunula, the owner of the excellent Kurosawa website, http://akirakurosawa.info/, has helpfully suggest a general structure for the article much different from the one currently featured on that Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/akira_kurosawa). Here is what Mr. Maunula came up with. The "x"s represent section headings: single for main headings, two or more for subheadings. (He has written, and I agree, that it would be pointless to number the headings at this point, as many may be added or subtracted as we go along.)
Lead Section
---------------
x Life and career
x.x Youth [1910-1935]
x.x Director in training [1936-1942]
x.x Early works [1943-1945]
x.x Postwar years [1946-1950]
x.x International recognition [1951-1954]
x.x Late 50s [1955-1959]
x.x Final works with Mifune [1960-1965]
x.x Brushes with Hollywood [1966-1969]
x.x Difficult 70s [1970-1979]
x.x Resurgence of financing [1980-1989]
x.x Last decade [1990-1998]
x.x Death and posthumous works [1998-2010]
x Directorial approach
x.x Influences
x.x Kurosawa and his contemporaries
x.x Working methods
x.x Collaboration with the Kurosawa-gumi
x.x Recurring themes
x.x Style
x.x "Western" director
x Legacy
x.x Kurosawa's influence
x.x.x Influence on cinematic arts
x.x.x Remakes
x.x.x Homages and references
x.x Film studies and Kurosawa
x.x Criticism of Kurosawa
x Works
x.x Filmography
x.x As an assistant director
x.x As a screenwriter
x.x Collaborations and television work
x.x Theater
x.x Books
x.x Awards
-----------------
x See also
x References
x Further reading
x External links
This is certainly a comprehensive and coherent structure from which we can work. I just have a few comments:
1. The biographical section divides AK's life exactly as I would wish to do so, except that I would combine the two 1950s subheadings into one single subheading with the title "International recognition." Also, there are some titles of subheadings that I would change: "Brushes with Hollywood" should perhaps be changed simply to "Tora! Tora! Tora!" as his aborted work on that film was his main activity during those bleak years. "Difficult 70s" and "Resurgence of financing" sound too breezy and informal for an encyclopedia article. Otherwise this part can remain as is.
2. For the second section, "Directorial approach" (although taken from the article as it now exists) sounds unsatisfactory. I would welcome suggestions on this section title. "Influences" might be changed to "Cinematic influences," because in that subsection, we would want to deal exclusively with his influence from film, rather than other art forms (e.g., Noh). I believe "Working methods" and "Style" might profitably be combined into the same subsection. "'Western' director" might be changed to something like "Reputation as 'Western' director."
3. In the "Legacy" section, the title of the "Influence on cinematic arts" subsection might be changed to something like "Overall cinematic influence." "Homages and references" should perhaps be changed to "Homages and allusions" to avoid confusion with the numbered references within the article itself. I'm not sure that the "Film studies and Kurosawa" subsection is even necessary: what would be the angle to pursue there? "Criticism of Kurosawa" should be plural: "Criticisms."
4. In the "Works" section, "Filmography" should remain the first subsection and "As director," "As assistant director" and "As editor" should be the sub-subsections under it. I don't know what television work he did besides personal appearances and commercials. I wasn't aware that he did any theatre work at all.
Please comment on any of the above and add any additional changes you would propose.
The passage below contains my draft for the revised Lead Section of the Kurosawa article. This section introduces him, explains why he is historically important and summarizes what is contained in the rest of the article.
First, here is the Lead as it appears in the article right now (I have included underscoring where links appear in the original:
"Akira Kurosawa (黒澤 明 or 黒沢 明, Kurosawa Akira?, 23 March 1910 – 6 September 1998) was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. In a career that spanned 50 years, Kurosawa directed 30 films. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in film history. In 1989, he was awarded the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement 'for cinematic accomplishments that have inspired, delighted, enriched and entertained worldwide audiences and influenced filmmakers throughout the world.' [1]"
Here is my revised version:
"Akira Kurosawa (黒澤 明 or 黒沢 明 Kurosawa Akira?, 23 March 1910 – 6 September 1998) was a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter and editor. In a film career that spanned over half a century, he directed or co-directed 31 films.
"Kurosawa entered the Japanese film industry in 1936 following a brief, unsuccessful career as a painter. After years of working on numerous films as an assistant director and scriptwriter, he made his debut as a director during the Second World War with the popular action film, Sanshiro Sugata (1943) (a.k.a. Judo Saga). The critically acclaimed Drunken Angel (1948), in which Kurosawa cast a then-unknown actor, Toshiro Mifune, in a starring role (the two men would collaborate on another 15 films), cemented his reputation as one of the most important filmmakers in Japan. Rashomon (1950), which premiered in Tokyo on August 25, 1950, and which also starred Mifune, became the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival and was then released in Europe and North America. The success of this film opened up Western film markets for the first time to the products of the Japanese film industry, which in turn led to international recognition for other significant Japanese film artists, such as Kenji Mizoguchi and Yasujiro Ozu. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Kurosawa released approximately a film a year, often to worldwide acclaim. After the mid-1960s, his output became much more infrequent, and his later work –- which included his last two epics, Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985) –- was sometimes more admired abroad than in his native land.
"He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers in movie history. In 1990, he was awarded the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement 'for cinematic accomplishments that have inspired, delighted, enriched and entertained worldwide audiences and influenced filmmakers throughout the world.' [1]"
Please note that because the Academy Award ceremony of March 26, 1990 honored mostly films make the previous year, it is called "the 1989 Academy Awards." However, AK's award was for lifetime achievement and thus belongs to the year it was actually given to him: 1990, when AK turned 80 years old.
Also note that I have numbered AKs films as 31 rather than 30, counting Those Who Make Tomorrow (1946), on the grounds that a) he never denied that he was actually involved in the making of that film, though not as sole director; b) it was commercially released at the time; and c) AK did not remove his name from the credits. The circumstance that he never wanted to make the picture and was dissatisfied with how it turned out is important but not sufficient to delete the work completely from his filmography, though those facts should be noted when we list the work. (Note also that the film appears on IMDB and in filmographies in books, such as Audie Bock's.) If directors could eliminate films from the record that they were ordered to make but hated, most Hollywood directors could (and probably would) erase half the movies from their filmographies on the exact same grounds.
Thank you in advance for any contributions and suggestions you may make.
JDB
Capsule Review: Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922)
8 years ago
Hi, this is "Blah" from akirakurosawa.info. The lead section draft is very good. As of this moment, I don't really have anything to suggest.
ReplyDeleteJust a question, however. For the Homages and Allusion section, will every known allusions/homage be included?
As it currently stands, the Kurosawa article only lists remakes while allusions to, for instance Seven Samurai, are listed in the Seven Samurai article. Will we take the allusions listed in the Seven Samurai article and move it to the Kurosawa article? And if we do that, should the Seven Samurai article still list the allusions?
Thanks for getting this started! Here are some comments to your comments:
ReplyDelete1a. I originally had the 50s under a single subheading, but since the previous subheadings cover only a few years each, it felt like a poor choice not to have a unique heading for the films Rashomon, The Idiot Ikiru and Seven Samurai, which -- I would imagine -- will constitute one of the longest sections of the biography.
1b. The reason why the Hollywood section is not labelled just "Tora! Tora! Tora!" is because just before working on that film, Kurosawa spent over a year location scouting and casting 'Runaway Train', which didn't materialise in the end.
1c. The heading titles are certainly open for debate. I personally like "Final works with Mifune" the least.
2a. I'm not sure why we wouldn't discuss Kurosawa's influences from non-cinematic arts like literature, theatre and painting in the "Influences" section? Kurosawa's work seems greatly influenced by arts other than cinema, and that, I would argue, is one reason for his uniqueness. But perhaps this section could be further divided into cinema, theatre, literature and painting subsections?
2b. "Working Methods" and "Style" could be combined, but I would keep them separate, like I originally suggested. The former section would be about the actual working methods (writing scripts collaboratively in hotels, extensive rehearsals, many historically accurate sets, editing films on the day of the shoot, etc.), while the latter would be more about the actual results shown on the screen (dynamism, the way camera tracks character movement, wipes, etc.). Of course, in some points these two do come together, for instance with his love of telephoto lenses.
3a. "Film Studies and Kurosawa" would be an interesting subsection, if anyone is up for writing it. Kurosawa, and especially Richie's early work on him has, I believe, been quite influential in the development of film studies as an academic discipline.
4a. I thought of "Filmography" as the commonly accepted "Kurosawa canon", which includes the films he directed, minus Those Who Make Tomorrow -- basically the films already listed in Wikipedia. But perhaps your division works better.
4b. Kurosawa directed one TV documentary about horses in the early 70s, and I think that the Noh documentary that he worked on in the mid 1980s was also for television (but I'm not absolutely certain about the latter, and lazy to check now).
4c. In 1945, Kurosawa wrote a one-act play called 'Shaberu'. I don't remember if it was ever staged. In 1948, during the strike at Toho, Kurosawa directed Chekhov's 'Proposal' as well as a stage adaptation of his own 'Drunken Angel' (with Mifune and Shimura in the main roles).
Regarding the introductory section:
1. I think we should write this last.
2. I'm not sure if Kurosawa's career as a painter could be described "unsuccessful". Not that it was extremely successful either, but he did exhibit.
3. I'm not sure if the Academy Award needs to be mentioned in the introductory section.
As for 'Those Who Make Tomorrow', since Kurosawa only co-directed a third of the film and was not involved in its writing or creation, his work there is generally considered more of a "hired hand" type rather than counting it as one of his own works. In fact, he probably had more influence over the last couple of films where he worked as an assistant director than he did with 'Those Who Make Tomorrow'. Kurosawa doesn't mention 'Those Who Make Tomorrow' in his biography, and it is also generally excluded from the official "canon" by those writing on his films. I would therefore also leave it out from the main filmography, and treat it like I would treat any film where Kurosawa worked as a "hired hand" for other directors (usually as an editor), or where he worked as an assistant director.
Thank you for your comments.
ReplyDeleteBlah:
The allusions and homages to AK's films should be thorough without going overboard. (I think it's possible some of the films which are attributed on Wikipedia to AK's influence may not be.) As for Seven Samurai, we could simply include an embedded link to that section of the separate Seven Samurai article, so as not to repeat it within our article.
Vili:
My responses, in your order:
1a. I see the run of films from Rashomon to The Hidden Fortress as of a piece and don't see the point of dividing them. I see your point about the importance of Rashomon, Ikiru and Seven Samurai within this group of films, but there are separate articles for all of those films. We can summarize the importance of each of them within our article in perhaps a paragraph or two.
1b. I was aware of the Runaway Train project and we can mention it in passing. But that project was stillborn (at least as far as AK's involvement goes) almost from the beginning, and it appeared on screen much later. The Tora! Tora! Tora! Incident, which resulted in a released film during that very time period and had such a dramatic impact on AK's career, should definitely be the focus of that section.
1c. I will try to come up with a better section title than “Final works with Mifune.”
2a. I think it's appropriate to discuss AK's non-cinematic influences within the "'Western' director?" section. The "Influences" section should keep to cinema because the "Kurosawa and his contemporaries" section that follows it will, I believe, deal almost exclusive with cinema.
2b. I understand your point, but at the same time, I want to work for brevity and concision wherever possible. This is going to be a *very* long article by Wikipedia standards, and I don't want to make it longer than it has to be.
3a. Speaking for myself, I'm not up to writing a Film Studies section and feel anyway that it would probably be more about Donald Richie than AK.
4a. Orson Welles' filmographies (for example) invariably include his work as an actor, not just as a director. I think we should include every film with which AK was involved in any capacity, dividing them by the job he was hired to do (screenwriting, assistant director, etc.).
4b and 4c. Thanks for the info. All this is very interesting and should be included.
Introductory section:
1. Actually, I think we should write this first instead of last, to set our tone as well as the parameters of what we want to talk about in the article.
2. When I call AK's painting career unsuccessful, I mean primarily that he was unable to support himself by his art. (He makes very clear in his book that he would never have applied to P.C.L. -- later Toho -- if he could have made a living otherwise.) His painting brought him a bit of attention at the time, but no real fame or reputation.
3. If you think too much is made of the Oscars generally, I would agree. But objectively speaking, they are important to a lot of people: the obituary headline of every film person that ever won an Oscar always includes that fact. Besides, what better way to make the point about AK's international reputation?
As for Those Who Make Tomorrow, yes he was a "hired hand," but the crucial difference is that he was a hired hand *as a director*, not an A.D. He did, after all, work on this movie and "sign" it. Yes, it is missing from some filmographies, but definitely not all! (Audie Bock in print and IMDB online both include it.) Again, it should be an "asterisked" entry, making clear AK's disavowal of the project, but the filmography definitely would not be complete if we eliminated it entirely.
I'll post a (moderately) revised version of the structure of the article and, if we can get agreement on it, we can start dividing up sections to work on.
JDB
An intriguing project. To mark the hundredth anniversary of Akira Kurosawa's birth here is an Flickering Myth article you may find to be of interest.
ReplyDeletehttp://flickeringmyth.blogspot.com/2010/03/akira-kurosawa-cinematic-artist.html
As for the in-depth feature Part One to Four will be posted on March 24, March 31, April 7, and April 14.
Enjoy.