- Paperback: 224 pages
- Publisher: University Press of Mississippi (3 April 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1578069971
- ISBN-13: 978-1578069972
- Product Dimensions: 22.8 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 535,338 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) is one of the most critically acclaimed and influential filmmakers of all time. His films crossed all borders and genres, bridging the traditional and the modern, the old and the new, the East and the West.He became the first Japanese director widely known in the West when Rashomon won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1951. Since then, his masterful techniques and innovative storytelling have influenced directors around the world for generations, including Quentin Tarantino, John Sturges, Sergio Leone, and George Lucas.This superb collection of interviews, ranging from 1952 - after his success at the Venice Film Festival - to just before his death in the mid-1990s, is a must-have for film buffs everywhere.
About the Author
Bert Cardullo is Professor of American Culture and Literature at Ege University in Turkey. He is also the author of a number of film-related books
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
An excellent assortment of interviews. The voice of the great director comes through, as do his intelligence and artistry. A must have for anyone who loves his films.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Various Lenses Focussed on Kurosawa
25 Jun 2008
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The interviews collected by Bert Cardullo in "Akira Kurosawa Interviews" give us various lenses and filters through which the great director's works were seen, over a fairly decent period of time. We have Japanese filmmaker interviewers, American critics, A Latin American novelist interviewer, and Bert Cardullo himself. We have the very respectful, the respectful but inquisitive, the annoyingly self-absorbed (you'll know it when you read it...a tipoff is that, after the most pompously convoluted question Kurosawa laughs...)and the one mind that provokes a real emotional response from Kurosawa.
That's a nice survey! You will hear many stories repeated (I begin to think that Kurosawa relied heavily on some basic themes drawn from his experience, and reiterated in his work with Audie Bock:"Something Like an Autobiography" and nearly word-for-word in Cardullo's final interview in the book) but, despite the repetition, new stuff is intermixed, and quite fascinating for Kurosawa fans and scholars.
Goes on the Kurosawa bookshelf.
That's a nice survey! You will hear many stories repeated (I begin to think that Kurosawa relied heavily on some basic themes drawn from his experience, and reiterated in his work with Audie Bock:"Something Like an Autobiography" and nearly word-for-word in Cardullo's final interview in the book) but, despite the repetition, new stuff is intermixed, and quite fascinating for Kurosawa fans and scholars.
Goes on the Kurosawa bookshelf.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Conversations with a master
29 May 2008
Format:Paperback
Akira Kurosawa: Interviews.
I recommend this book unreservedly to anybody interested in film. In conversation with knowledgeable and distinguished interviewers Kurosawa gives detailed insights into how he works: how every stage of a film is exhaustively discussed beforehand by all its participants and the Director himself; how unplanned factors such as the weather can contribute to episodes of unforgettable beauty and mystery in the finished film; his refusal to be regarded as a philosopher, let alone a preacher ('I look at life as an ordinary man. I simply put my feelings into the film'); his passionate interest in, and extraordinary knowledge of Japanese history, of the social and military life of the given period; of how his early training as a painter has informed his perceptions and his methods.
Apart from all that we learn about Kurosawa's work, the book is full of insights into recent Japanese history and contemporary society, including, of course, Japanese cinema.
Kurosawa's speech is engagingly fresh and energetic, and despite his great fame he seems to be utterly without self-importance.
I recommend this book unreservedly to anybody interested in film. In conversation with knowledgeable and distinguished interviewers Kurosawa gives detailed insights into how he works: how every stage of a film is exhaustively discussed beforehand by all its participants and the Director himself; how unplanned factors such as the weather can contribute to episodes of unforgettable beauty and mystery in the finished film; his refusal to be regarded as a philosopher, let alone a preacher ('I look at life as an ordinary man. I simply put my feelings into the film'); his passionate interest in, and extraordinary knowledge of Japanese history, of the social and military life of the given period; of how his early training as a painter has informed his perceptions and his methods.
Apart from all that we learn about Kurosawa's work, the book is full of insights into recent Japanese history and contemporary society, including, of course, Japanese cinema.
Kurosawa's speech is engagingly fresh and energetic, and despite his great fame he seems to be utterly without self-importance.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
GOOD REFERENCE BOOK
28 Aug 2008
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This title is part of a series edited by the University Press of Mississippi, and as I've already reviewed one of the other titles, I'll just say this one is good as usual, but it still lacks the depth of Kurosawa's own "Something Like An Autobiography". The good thing is, his autobiography stops right when he becomes an international director, because he considers unnecessary to tell what people might already know. This book covers a longer span, up until Kurosawa's last "Madadayo". There's nothing wrong with this book, but if you really want to know about Kurosawa, and not just about the way he made films, you'd better start by the autobiography. Then, read this one.
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