Annotated Bibliography November 2, 2009
Posted by Emmanuel Elpenord in : Uncategorized , trackbackEmmanuel Elpenord
Prof. L. Quinby
Annotated Bibliography:
Kurosawa and Cop-Drama Films
Desser, David. The Samurai Films of Akira Kurosawa. Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, c1983.
PN1995.9.S24 D47 1983
This book analyzes Kurosawa’s use of genre and American film motifs; “if Kurosawa utilizes Western motifs and makes them his own…what is the nature of the themes, techniques, the codes in fact that Kurosawa adapts and transforms…when they are adopted, what is the significance of the resultant expression” are the thesis questions the book answers. (Desser 6-8)
The book presents a breakdown of the samurai genre into its different kinds and how they evolved from each other as time progressed. It also lays out an enumerated narrative sequence of samurai films; “(1) A scene of violence is underway… (2) The hero is identified… (3) The hero’s circumstances are detailed… (4) The victim is introduced…” This passage will be infinitely useful when drawing connections between both my samurai film sources and cop-drama films to samurai films. (Desser 48)
This book also has individual chapters devoted to Kurosawa’s samurai films, Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, and Kagemusha, where Desser delves, in a clear, textbook-like fashion, into the visual, cinematic features of the pieces. He also discusses the dynamics between the characters in individual films.
Goodwin, James. Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, c1994.
PN1998.3.K87 G66 1994
This book discusses Kurosawa’s films from an intertextual standpoint, looking at films like Rashomon and Ran, which were originally short stories and a book, respectively. The book argues that these mediums consist of “codes of communication” and “form[s]” different from that of film. “Cinema resembles so many other arts. If cinema has very literary characteristics, it also has theatrical characteristics…attributes of painting and sculpture and musical elements.” (Goodwin 11)
A majority of the text is spent connecting literature and other art forms to film and cinema, Kurosawa’s films primarily among others. This majority of the text is of little direct use to me, though it may potentially give me another perspective from which to view my chosen films. Regardless, the chapter on Rashomon and the wipe-cut, a camera technique ubiquitous in Kurosawa films, is shrewd and much more informative and useful. The wipe-cut is a transitional cut where a new image rolls over the old, usually in a horizontal direction. The wipe cut chapter references Donald Richie’s view on the wipe-cut as a “punctuation mark,” and how it most frequently “gives an impression of the elapse of time usually a short period of time.” (Goodwin 145)
Johnstone, Keith. “Status.” Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre. London: Faber and Faber Ltd, 1979.
This book is directed more towards actors and performing artists; it provides exercises for strengthening spontaneity and improvisational skills. A series of thesis questions the book addresses are, “What is story? What makes people laugh? What relationships hold an audience’s interest, and why? How does an improviser come up with what comes next? Is conflict dramatically necessary? (the answer is No).” The tone of the piece is anecdotal and very personal.
This book has no direct connection to the films I will be viewing and dissecting, but the chapter “Status” is greatly informing how I view and interpret the performance choices of actors onscreen in my film sources. Status, for lack of better words, is the relationship of a person to a “thing,” be it another person or an inanimate object. This status could be high or low, and some signifiers of high status can be used to portray low status and vice versa. These ideas and concepts will be crucial in examining the relationships between vigilante characters and lawmen characters. I also hope to use the concepts from status to classify camera motion; a high angle shot of a subject, pointing down at him, would usually be a lowering in status, but there are many exceptions to that rule as it is with most status signifiers.
Kurosawa, Akira. “Rashomon.” Rashomon. Richie, Donald ed. New Brunswick [N.J.]: Rutgers University Press, c1987.
PN1997.R244 R37 1987
This source, a primary source, contains the continuity script for Rashomon and an introduction to the script, which is essentially the Rashomon chapter from editor Richie’s “The Films of Akira Kurosawa.” The script translation is based on the original text written by Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto; it is authentic and truthful to the production. The organization of the script is optimal for my purposes. It’s not by dialogue like in a screenplay, but by shot and shot number, in camerawork shorthand.
The source also contains reviews and commentaries on Rashomon. Some of them are in ardent praise of the film, “Its greatest novelty is its story, which is non-national, timeless, and universal,” written by Richard Griffith (The Saturday Review 1952; 131). Others deplore it, “I feel I must tell you that Rashomon is a lot more simpleminded than any product of the mysterious East has any right to be,” written by John McCarten (The New Yorker 1951, 135). This section is even keeled and represents both sides of the fence.
Kurosawa, Akira. Seven Samurai and Other Screenplays. London: Faber and Faber, 1992.
PN1997 .K84513 1992
This book, a primary source, contains the screenplays for Throne of Blood, translated by Hisae Niki, and Ikiru and Seven Samurai, both translated by Donald Richie, the latter of which I am most concerned. The Seven Samurai chapter is preceded by an introduction, which is essentially the Seven Samurai chapter from Richie’s “The Films of Akira Kurosawa.”
Compared to the subtitles in the film, Richie’s translation is quite accurate, but still a bit off, a bit odd; it’s more literary than it is cinematic. The translation, however, is not for what I’ll be using this source; I’ll being using it for organizing and identifying shots and sequences. Once again, even this facet is more literary than cinematic, as it is written in long form and subjectively as opposed to shorthand and tersely as in the Rashomon continuity script I’ve found. This isn’t altogether a bad thing since the shot descriptions are more colorful and memorable. Another fault is that the script is for the 160-minute theatrical release version of the film and not the original 200-minute version I will be studying.
Mellen, Joan. Seven Samurai. London: BFI Pub., 2002.
PN1997 .S4726 M44 2002
This source is a potent one despite its length, 77 pages. It refers to many different authors and books, the lion’s share of which I have, including Richie, Prince, Desser, and Goodwin, mostly for support and preludes to arguments. This source doesn’t lay out a thesis plainly, or have an overarching argument, but concentrates strongly on the film of its namesake. It refers to other directors, Kurosawa’s colleagues and contemporaries, briefly to present the effect of Kurosawa’s work on other directors and the Japanese film industry. Unlike other sources that pile on the background information and context, it does so sparsely, sparingly and in a more appetizing way—honey with the bitter medicine.
This piece places the film in a historical, cultural context, but doesn’t make that perspective a priority. More of the text focuses on the narrative of the film, analyzing it in a clear, chronological fashion. The character study this source provides is very insightful and thought provoking: “In, Seven Samurai, [Kikuchiyo] he develops from being an aimless drifter, alcoholic, and and roughly aggressive, to becoming a dedicated member of a group with a strong sense of honour.” (Mellen 30)
Though this source doesn’t have any continuity script excerpts, it discusses cinematographic themes and recurring shot sequences in the film with great detail and piercing analysis.
Prince, Stephen. The Warrior’s Camera: the Cinema of Akira Kurosawa. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, c1991.
PN1998.3.K87 P75 1991
Because of its title, I was expecting this source to focus more on the cinematography of Kurosaa’s samurai films, but the majority of the book is spent looking at his films in a historical and societal context. The thesis of the source asks why is it, “that a director of Kurosawa’s status has been infrequently studied. First published more than [forty] years ago, Donald Richie’s The Films of Akira Kurosawa has remained the only full-length English –language study of Kurosawa’s entire body of work” (Prince, xvi). If I were studying how history and political circumstances affected Kurosawa’s work this piece would be a godsend, but I’m not, and it isn’t. When examining Kurosawa’s films Prince, instead of a chronological ordering, groups the films topically or by the “cultural issues they address,” which makes sense for his purposes, but makes it hard for me to nail down prevalent information I may need.
The text also provides a different perspective in interpreting performance choices in Kurosawa’s Samurai films: “the Noh has the mask, and while staring at it, the actor becomes the man whom the mask represents. The performance also has a defined style, and in devoting himself to it faithfully, the actor becomes possessed.” Johnstone’s “Impro” has a chapter, “Mask and trance,” which discusses in depth this style of acting and improvisation. Neither author references the other, however.
Richie, Donald. The Films of Akira Kurosawa. Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 1996.
PN1998 .3 .K87 R5 1996
This text, in short, is ubiquitous in Kurosawa film study. It has, nearly without fail, been mentioned, or quoted, or referenced in every Kurosawa source I’ve read so far. However, not every reference to this work has been favorable; a significant amount of the references I’ve encountered criticize Richie’s blatant, unabashed dismissal of Kurosawa’s later films as over-sentimental drivel, and under-appreciating and pigeon-holing Kurosawa’s less popular films. With that said, this source has much versatility; many other sources use this piece as a jumping off point either as a stepladder of support in an argument or a stepping-stone of rebuttal.
The rather voluminous text is gives each of Kurosawa’s films its own chapter, in which he very thoroughly covers a range of aspects like story, treatment, production, et cetera, without becoming tedious or convoluted. Richie on Hidden Fortress: “Villains and heroes are, as always in a Kurosawa picture, equated. All three men are bad…[they] must be judged to be bad but when the majority is bad, something happens: the balance must be readjusted. Any majority adjusts the norm and it was our morality that was at fault at the beginning…” (Richie 136).
Films:
Kurosawa, Akira, dir. Rashomon. Perfs. Toshiro Mifune, Masayuki Mori. Daiei Motion Picture Company, 1950.
This film, a primary source based on two short stories by Akutagawa: “Rashomon” and “In a Grove,” is a story within a story. The outer story is of three men, a woodcutter, a priest, and a commoner that joins the former two under the gate of a destroyed temple to get out of a heavy rainstorm. The priest and woodcutter are in much grief and lamentation, and when the commoner inquires why, the two continue to explain the inner story of a rape and murder that occurs in the woods and the police investigation that follows. Testimony from the woodcutter and priest are heard, as well as from the police agent, who catches the bandit that raped the wife and killed the husband. The bandit also submits testimony, as do the wife and the husband, now dead, through a medium. This makes for seven different, and ultimately conflicting, versions of one story. “Five people interpret an action and each interpretation is different because, the telling and retelling, the people reveal not the action but themselves” (Richie 75).
The several different testimonies aren’t delivered to a “judge” character, but are delivered to the camera, breaking the fourth wall, sucking the viewer into the narrative, and, by the end of the film, put the weight of the judgment of the shoulders of the viewer. This device works all too perfectly with my argument of how viewers see vigilante and lawmen characters.
In this way, a theme/thesis in this source is “the truth is subjective.” The way “truth” is presented cinematically in each character’s testimony is ripe for dissection. The low angle and high angle shots in the scene where the sleeping bandit catches a glimpse of the wife on horse back works well in visually establishing the status of the two characters. The triangular screen composition of the priest, woodcutter, and commoner characters in the outer story of the film throughout the piece shifts and does so purposefully mirroring the confliction in the inner story.
Kurosawa, Akira, dir. Sanjuro. Perfs. Toshiro Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, Keiju Kobayashi. Toho Company, 1962.
In this film, a primary source, nine young samurai, clean-cut and steadfast, the leader of which is the nephew of the homely chamberlain, are suspicious of corruption among the clan elders and junior chamberlains. They get help from Tsubaki Sanjuro, Toshiro Mifune, a rude, disheveled samurai in need of a shave, when they discover the “good-looking” superintendent is the one behind the fraud. The young samurai’s gung-ho, sword slashing plans fall flat on their face as Sanjuro predicts, and conversely, Sanjuro’s plans are constantly foiled by the young samurai’s interference, stemming from their mistrust of him due to his shady appearance. In the end, they rescue the chamberlain from the clutches of the superintendent with a plan involving Sanjuro being captured and tricking the superintendent and his men into signaling for their own capture by sending tons of tsubaki, camellias, downstream to the neighboring backyard where the nine youth were waiting.
The driving theme/thesis of this source fits beautifully with my research topic: “illusion versus reality: things as they seem, things as they are and the muddle that comes from confusing [the two]” (Richie, 157). The belying appearances and the true natures of the characters are revealed through shots and camera angles in this film.
Early in the film, after Mifune conceals the young samurai from the ambush the superintendent prepared for them there is a beautiful shot that send chills up my spine. As Mifune bids them farewell and steps out the door, the camera goes to a medium, ground shot of Mifune’s feet and lower legs with the nine young men bowing deeply in the background. If the shot is flattened, it puts the young samurai literally bowing at Mifune’s feet in gratitude without them actually doing so. This flip in status establishes their relationship for the remainder of the film.
Kurosawa, Akira, dir. Seven Samurai. Perfs. Toshiro Mifune, Masayuki Mori. Toho Company, 1954.
This film, a primary source, is a about a village of farmers that gets ransacked and pillaged regularly by a group of forty bandits. The farmers decide to hire samurai for protection, and after obtaining the altruistic help of an older, well-traveled samurai, Kambei, another six follow. Each of the seven having a distinct persona that represents a “facet of samurai virtue;” the leader, Kambei brings “integrity and patriarchal selflessness,” Gorobei, his counterpart and intellectual, Shichiroji, loyalty, Heihachi, “open-hearted generosity,” Kyuzo, master swordsmanship, Katsushiro, youthful enthusiasm, and Kikuchiyo, “passion, energy, and intensity.” (Mellen, 7)
A subtle but startling question asked by this film is “what is the difference between samurai, and bandits,” or vigilantes and lawmen, in my research’s context. In a speech Mifune’s character makes after uncovering the allegedly poor farmers’ stash of weapons and armor, and rice and sake, he blames the samurai’s fighting for forcing the farmers to those lengths.
“From the onset, Kurosawa reveals what will be the dominant shot composition of Seven Samurai: the situating of men in groups. At moments host will contain only smaurai, at other, farmers… in defense of the village class distinctions must be put aside—farmers and samurai occupy the same shot. The fate of one is tied always to the fate of many…” (Mellen 34)
O’Connor, Gavin, dir. Pride and Glory. Perfs. Colin Farrel, Edward Norton, Jon Voight. New Line Cinema, 2008.
This film, a primary source, opens on an NYPD night football game with Colin Farrel’s character on the field, and his family with a legacy of police officers in the stands. The next scene is the gory aftermath of an ambush where four police officers have been slain. Edward Norton’s character, who moved to the “missing persons” department after being coerced to lie regarding a police cover-up, is put on the case by his father, played by John Voight, only to find that his brother-in-law, Farrel, is the leader of a group of corrupt officers, one which, played by John Ortiz, leaked the information that led to the police ambush.
Norton is then torn between allegiance to his badge, his role as a “lawman,” and loyalty to his family, his role as “vigilante,” when the weight of solving the case is on his shoulders. This film doesn’t strike new ground as far as plot, and critics certainly let that be known, however, the cinematography and visual aesthetic of the film has been duly noted, and will be dissected in my research.
One of the more gut-wrenching scenes in the film is when Farrel’s character, accompanied by another officer, barges into the apartment of a drug leader’s second in command and threatens his family. As the officers enter, the young children and old women flee to screen-right to a small kitchen, a position of weakness and submission, where they stay composition-wise whenever they’re onscreen. A parallel can be found when Farrel bashes in the face of the lieutenant, and the lieutenant, after spitting out some teeth, begs Farrel, from a lower-screen-right, high-angle shot, to unhand his baby. The composition here puts the second in command man low status to Farrel. Farrel at the climax of the scene lays the lieutenant’s baby down on an ironing board, a screen-left-to-right, horizontal index vector, and holds a steaming iron over the child in a high magnitude screen-up-to-down, vertical motion vector, juxtaposing the calmness and balance of the horizontal vector and the dynamism of the vertical vector for a more dramatic, galvanizing effect.
Sorcese, Martin, dir. The Departed. Perfs. Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2006.
This film, a primary source, is about two police academy students in Boston, Massachusetts, one of whom, Damon’s character, grows up to be a state police officer that feeds information to Nicholson’s character. The other, DiCaprio’s character, is held back from joining because of his questionable family and background, but is enlisted as an undercover agent pretending to be a criminal to get info from Nicholson’s character regarding the illegal trade of state-of-the-art electronics. By the end, we discover many secondary characters, and Nicholson’s character himself, are double agents. The cinematography throughout the film foreshadows this big reveal.
During the first scenes and sequences, introducing Nicholson’s character, his face is in very dim, low-key lighting, obscuring his face, while his surroundings are well to evenly lit. The first time Nicholson is in high-key lighting is after a smash cut to him on a beach burying a bullet in someone’s head. The gunshot is shot in an asymmetrical screen-left-to-right index vector of the gun, and “motion vector” of the bullet and victim’s head. This sequence could be a foreshadowing to Nicholson’s crime lord act being a façade, where his true identity is hidden.
This source will serve greatly in a character study of vigilante versus lawman in cinematography and performance choice. Since DiCaprio’s vigilante character is disguised as a criminal and Damon’s lawman character actually is one, the cinematographic choices made very much inform the reception of the characters.
