I do think we have to be careful with personal memories and how we might want things to have been. Especially when it comes to film. I've just finished Mark Kermode's It's only a movie and he is very good on this. As a film critic (and scholar, he has a PhD) he notes that he sometimes goes back to films to find that he has mixed sequences up with other films, other characters, the trailer just before, or his fantasy of what would have been a great film. He applies the same rule to his life (as it is a memoir) and warns us against trusting his memory since he can't. If you read the more careful works on Kurosawa, it is clear he has reworked his past somewhat -- and he warns us of this in the very title and in his introdiuction...<br>
Lola<br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 14 January 2011 21:31, <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mccaskem@georgetown.edu">mccaskem@georgetown.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
"Potemkin" is listed as a movie seen ca. 1926 by Kurosawa, on p.73 of<br>
"Something Like An Autobiography," along with Pudovkin's "Mother" the same<br>
year, and Pudovkin's "Storm Over Asia" ca. 1928 (p. 74). Kurosawa says that<br>
there may be a time lag of a couple of years past the year he gives, before they<br>
were shown in Japan (p. 74).<br>
<br>
In the English translation, the list looks like a long footnote, but it's actually a 4-<br>
page table, a full of the regular text, in the Japanese original, Gama no abura,<br>
138-141. The parenthetical synchronous event comments - e.g. "Hara<br>
Assassinated," "Japanese Communist Party Established," "Peace Preservation<br>
Law," "First Radio Broadcast," etc., were all put in by Kurosawa in the original, by<br>
the way. I had somehow once thought that Audie Bock might have put them in<br>
the Eng. version for comparison, but they were already there in the Japanese<br>
version.<br>
<br>
It's hard to understand why Kuroswa would say he saw it back then if he didn't.<br>
It seems to me that seeing the Odessa Steps scene for the first time is not an<br>
experience he (or at least I) would likely be absent-minded or abstract about.<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
<br>
Michael McC<br>
<br>
<br>
</blockquote></div><br>