Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema [Paperback]

James Goodwin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1993

In Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema, James Goodwin draws on contemporary theoretical and critical approaches to explore the Japanese director's use of a variety of texts to create films that are uniquely intertextual and intercultural. Surveying all of Kurosawa's films and examining six films in depth— The Idiot, The Lower Depths, Rashomon, Ikiru, Throne of Blood, and Ran—Goodwin finds in Kurosawa's themes and techniques the capacity to restructure perceptions of Western and Japanese cultures and to establish new meanings in each.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Goodwin's analysis is most interesting in this account of how many Kurosawa plots (like Rashomon and Ikiru) feature a modernist competition between texts to argue a version of what 'really' happened.

(Journal of Asian Studies )

A dense, theoretically sophisticated account of the intertextual nature of film as a medium. Goodwin discusses here, among other things, interculturality, the problematic notion of the auteur, and the dialogic production processes employed by Kurosawa. Above all, Kurosawa is described as a film-maker for whom life and art are always in the process of becoming, never static or singular.

(Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory )

This is the first book that attempts to link his work to trends and issues that cut across national boundaries and transcend immediate historical circumstances. Extremely well written, well considered, and provocative, it moves Kurosawa's cinema into the realm of international culture where it belongs.

(David Desser, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign )

Review

"This is the first book that attempts to link his work to trends and issues that cut across national boundaries and transcend immediate historical circumstances. Extremely well written, well considered, and provocative, it moves Kurosawa's cinema into the realm of international culture where it belongs." -- David Desser, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 280 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (November 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801846617
• ISBN-13: 978-0801846618
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,398,509 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars How Do We Understand Film?, October 12, 2005

By 

Samurai Girl (Michigan) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema (Paperback)

One of the issues skirted by James Goodwin's book "Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema" is the difficulty of making sense of visual meaning with the tool of language. Goodwin's attempts to diagram a deconstruction of the "text" proves cumbersome and unsatisfactory, and his "solutions" to the hinted at, but never directly addressed problem of visual meaning, are disappointing. There are valuable insights into the work of Kurosawa, but few enough, and nothing that cannot be found elsewhere in the literature.

Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto's book "Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema" is, more satifyingly confrontational with the problem of visual meaning, and struggles with the problem of outmoded methodologies and critical assessments of film.

The long and short of it is--the best book on Kurosawa is "Something Like an Autobiography" by Kurosawa himself with the authoring/translation skills of Audie Bock. Nothing will illuminate the man's work more clearly. No book on Kurosawa is more worth reading time and time again.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Experience Kurosawa to the outer depths..., November 9, 2003

By 

Terry Bohannon (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema (Paperback)

Goodwin brings the tools of literary criticism to study the films of Akira Kurosawa. He does this by bringing to light many of the cinematographic, historic, and narrative influences of Kurosawa's work.

Such as when introducing color to his films, Henri Langlois (head of the Cinémathèque Française) showed Kurosawa how color can be used to communicate a distinctive meaning.

Or how, in "Ran" (1985), Kurosawa was influenced by the legend of "Motonari Mori (1497-1571)," and by inverting the story, "whose three sons are admired in Japan as the ideal family for loyalty." After writing the first few drafts of the script, Kurosawa noticed a resemblance to Shakespeare's "King Lear". What surprises me about this, is that I believed that the script was primarily influenced by "King Lear", but that's not true. The play is influenced by "King Lear", but was crafted separately under the influence of the inversion of the Motonari Mori legend and its major influence being the mind of Kurosawa himself. The film then becomes an inversion of the ideal, a twisting of the archetype.

Goodwin tore down the myth that Kurosawa was an isolated artist, and introduced me to a man who immersed himself in the literature, drama, and cinema of the whole human experience.

I strongly recommend his book, it opened my eyes; it may open yours.